Friday, June 01, 2007

The Bush administration wants you to eat mad cows

Because if they let one meatpacker test for mad cow, they'd have to let all meatpackers test for mad cow and that would be really expensive and would make the corporations unhappy and anyway you don't show the effects of mad cow until you get Alzheimer's and that's years away so why should you care?

Not many seemed to notice when Bush served the Japanese Prime Minister beef for the Camp David visit, but it was a snide dig at Japan's food safety demands.

At the meeting Friday at the US presidential retreat in Camp David, Maryland, the two leaders are set to dine on an all-American lunch of controversial US beef -- in the form of cheeseburgers.

Japanese curbs on US beef are one of the stickier trade issues the leaders were expected to discuss.

Japan this week agreed to ease its strict inspection regime on imports of US beef, which it had imposed over concerns about mad-cow disease.

Japan insists that beef be inspected for mad cow, the U.S. says Japan should buy our beef without inspection:

WASHINGTON, April 19 (Reuters) - A White House visit by Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe next week may not bring an expansion of U.S. beef sales to Japan, said Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns on Thursday.

"I'd be very surprised if there was a breakthrough," Johanns told reporters. He said he had no meetings scheduled with Japanese officials during Abe's visit, set for April 26-27.

Johanns said he and Japan's agriculture minister, Toshikatsu Matsuoka, discussed beef trade by telephone earlier on Thursday. "We did not reach an agreement," said Johanns.

At present, Japan allows import of U.S. beef from cattle aged 20 months or younger provided that slaughterhouses remove organs posing the highest risk of carrying mad cow disease.

Chet at Vanity Press has the facts.

Reaction? EAT LESS BEEF.

Cows are causing global warming anyway.

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