USDA Bans Downer Cattle from Human Food

Reuters ^ | 12/30/03 | Reuters

[DonQ]

What is astonishing to me is that, up to now, such animals and such dubious pieces of meat were accepted for human consumption.

A sick or mutilated animal - and most of the meat portions mentioned - would not be accepted for kosher food, one reason that kosher meat is so much more expensive - and so much less likely to be tainted.

[Phaedrus]

Do you know the method how Japan tests for BSE? Is it a live animal test or is it at necropsy?

I know only that the press reports that Japan tests every animal. In my rooting around for information, I read that a newer, swifter test is available from a private company. And I believe I read that lab testing in rats or hampsters found some small evidence of prion "infection" in hindquarters muscle tissue.

I think the USDA is playing fast and loose with the health of the nation to minimize cost to the beef industry. This is unconscionable. And if they won't step up to the need for more definative action, the export market, 10% of the total market, will remain closed. Foreign nations will not buy lip action by some USDA bureacrat sophist. They ACT to protect their public. But to judge from this thread, I constitute a "majority of one" on this issue so this is all FWIW ...

[Wayland]

"If rendering plants have any inkling of some sort of increased liability for accepting dead or downer cattle, look for some firms to just get out of the business and others to set up stricter acceptance criteria."

Would tort reform remove their concern for the "liability" you refer to? Or to you liability from the gov. for violating a regulation?

[mathluv]

I haven't lived on a ranch for over 20 years. At that time, If a cow could not walk into the slaughter house, it did not get slaughtered. Maybe that was just Texas, or maybe it was just our slaughter house.

[Wayland]

Do most here want this kind of added gov. regulation?

Or should we trust that the industry will act responsibly and not impose this added burden on the industry?

For that matter, should we abolish the USDA?

[Cboldt]

A meat industry official said the new restrictions might prompt slaughterhouses to refuse to accept downer cattle. That would impair USDA's mad-cow surveillance system, which relies on spotting suspect animals at slaughter.

Unintended consequences *bump* -- FedGov in action. The king can do no wrong.

[Phaedrus]

Lead paragraph from an article by John Stauber on CommonDreams.org:

The USDA's much ballyhooed new measures to address the emergence of mad cow disease in the US are wholly inadequate. Until there is a complete and total ban on all feeding of slaughterhouse waste to livestock, coupled with the testing of millions of animals, mad cow disease will continue to amplifying and spread in US animal feed and among livestock. Eventually we will see cases of human mad cow disease emerging. It was a decade after the recognition of the first mad cow in Britain that the human deaths, continuing today, began appearing.

It's the Cow Feed, Stupid!

[Phaedrus]

"I don't anticipate that the change in the specified risk materials, the ban on downer animals in the food system, are going to cost the USDA significant amounts of money or for that matter the industry significant amounts of money," [Veneman] said.

Politics. Fire her.

[Fury]

Would tort reform remove their concern for the "liability" you refer to? Or to you liability from the gov. for violating a regulation?

Please re-read what I wrote. I'm not speaking on behalf of the meat industry. I'm a producer, who tries to research the latest information on TSE's, specifically scrapie.

[Admin Moderator]

Knock it off