Let Beef Consumers Decide
The conventional angle on mad cow disease in the United States is that the story began Dec. 23, when the degenerative, neurological disorder was discovered in a single cow in Washington state, then began wrapping up a few weeks later when it was determined that the cow had been born in Canada and that it had probably acquired the disease by eating something banned in the U.S. -- cattle feed containing meat from cattle and other ruminants. Whew!
That, at least, is the story the livestock industry likes. As the Shasta County Cattlewomen put it to California legislators last month, the disease -- a human variant of which has killed 139 people in Europe since 1986 -- poses a “near zero” risk to consumers of U.S. products.
The nation’s top 10 export markets didn’t buy that argument. As Agriculture Secretary Ann M. Veneman told Congress last week, U.S. beef-related exports declined 90% in the first two months of this year.
That’s why California state Sens. Mike Machado (D-Linden) and Jackie Speier (D-Hillsborough) are backing a bill that would establish a voluntary system allowing slaughterhouses to test all meat, instead of just some, for mad cow disease.
The bill, SB 1425, is partly a rebuke to Veneman, who last month barred Creekstone Farms, a Kansas packer of Black Angus beef, from testing all of its cows for mad cow disease, as Japan, its $200,000-a-week customer, has insisted it do.
The original version of the Speier/Machado bill was just as outrageously overreaching as Veneman’s edict to Creekstone, but in the other direction. It would have required slaughterhouses to test all cattle older than 20 months for the disease and financed the vetting by forcing consumers to pay a fee when they bought beef. Or, as the bill put it, “bovine-derived meat food products.”
Fortunately, Sen. Denise Ducheny (D-San Diego) saved California from that folly at a hearing last week by insisting she would not vote for the bill until all language requiring fees or testing was stricken. Now the bill is being amended: Beef producers could test if they wished, and those who chose to buy tested beef would be the ones to pay the premium. It’s the free market at work.
Veneman could challenge the bill’s implementation on the ground that federal law gives her department, not the states, authority over livestock testing. Even if she does, the California bill should be passed and signed, emboldening other states and producers to challenge Veneman back.
The blanket testing for mad cow disease that Creekstone proposes, and many other nations have implemented, can be debated on the basis of risk and probability. But, as with costly organic food or milk from cows not fed growth hormones, the decision should be the consumers.
