How far removed are Washington Republicans from actual conservative values? This far:
The Bush administration said Tuesday it will fight to keep meatpackers from testing all their animals for mad cow disease.
I didn’t take that out of context — in fact, the article only gets worse from there. David Waldman has more at Daily Kos.
Summary of the reasoning: 1) It would raise the bar for the rest of the cattle industry, 2) Higher likelihood of false positives, which could hurt profits.
That doesn’t even make business logic. If someone got CJD and died from eating BSE-infested cow meat, wouldn’t that be an even bigger loss in profits for the meat industry? Might even turn people vegetarian. ;-)
It’s amazing that raising the bar could be considered bad. How far down the rabbit hole have we gone?
According to Wikipedia, there have been precisely 3 cases of BSE (Mad Cow Disease) and 3 more of its variant affecting humans in the US. Ever. Testing all the animals seems like a solution in search of a problem. There’s a point at which safety precautions must yield to common sense. For example, lowering the speed limit on interstates to 35 MPH would undoubtedly lower traffic fatalities, but no one seriously suggests doing this. The cost in other terms is simply too high. IMO, this is just an opportunity for you guys to beat up on Bush a little bit.
JS, just to be clear, what Bush is opposing here is allowing private corporations to conduct their own tests on their own meat using their own money and their own standards.
Do you seriously favor a government so big that it can bar corporations from testing their own products?
Yeah, well, when you put it like that, I mean, I kinda guess you have sort of a good point there.
Phew. You had me worried for a bit there. :)