The US Agriculture Department’s boorish manipulation of the mad cow scare last December is coming back to haunt it. Several reports are out today indicating that the single confirmed case of BSE at that farm in Washington State was not sick after all. Newsday reports that
“[c]ontrary to the department’s account, three eyewitnesses at the Washington state plant where the Holstein was slaughtered Dec. 9 say the cow appeared healthy, lawmakers on the House Government Reform Committee said in a letter Tuesday to Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman.”
One Washington State paper concurs, noting that the only reason BSE was detected was because the guilty farm voluntarily participated in a “program to check healthy animals for the disease. ‘No one would have ever known,’ [the farm’s owner] said while flanked by his wife, sons, brother and parents. ‘Their premise for testing is false. The whole industry has been injured, and not just the meat industry -- the livestock industry -- because of shortcomings in USDA’s policy.’ “
According to another paper, “[t]he only reason the cow’s brain was tested for the disease was because the federal government had made a special deal to pay the slaughterhouse to provide samples, according to the co-manager of Vern’s Moses Lake Meats.” Meanwhile, USDA officials are withholding information that might cast a light on its dealings, says the Miami Herald.
“It’s preposterous to think that government can negotiate an agreement that guarantees that kind of information will be kept secret,” said Speier, who chairs the Government Oversight Committee. “We’re supposed to be transparent. Agreements like this violate what government is supposed to be all about.” The real question is whether the USDA (or any level of the federal government, for that matter) can withstand the effects of transparency.
A recent Sacramento Bee story is headlined “Mad Cow Truth’s Doubted“, while another notes that California Democrats, outraged “at an agreement that kept secret the details of a recent mad cow beef recall, have scheduled a hearing Tuesday that could be the first step in terminating the deal.” Will other state legislatures follow suit and stand up to the USDA?
See my two Mises.org articles on this subject here and here.
