South Korea doesn't want our beef...

I wonder why that is?:

SEOUL, South Korea - Tens of thousands of South Koreans rallied Saturday night against a government decision to import U.S. beef in the largest demonstration in a month of almost daily protests.

A crowd estimated by police at 38,000 people filled a plaza in front of city hall. Protesters lit candles, waved placards and chanted slogans criticizing President Lee Myung-bak.

South Korea agreed in April to reopen what was formerly the third-largest overseas market for U.S. beef. It had been shut for most of the past 4 1/2 years following the first U.S. case of mad cow disease in a Canadian-born cow in Washington state in 2003.

That deal, coupled with some sensational media reports, sparked fears of mad cow disease and triggered protests calling for scrapping or renegotiating the agreement.

Oh, c'mon! Our beef is totally safe! Totally! Tot.. ah ...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Bush administration on Friday urged a federal appeals court to stop meatpackers from testing all their animals for mad cow disease, but a skeptical judge questioned whether the government has that authority.

Ah... hmm: (my bold)

TUESDAY May 13, 2008 (foodconsumer.org) -- The Bush administration on Friday asked a federal appeals court to stop meatpackers from testing all their animals for mad cow disease, USA Today reports.

A low court ruled early that Kansas-based Creekstone Farms Premium Beef can conduct mad cow disease testing in all animals. The company pursues the testing to meet the demand from foreign markets like Japan, which requires the testing for every domestic cow.

But the United States Department of Agriculture strongly opposed such a testing saying meatpackers have no right to such a testing. And it also said such a testing would undermine consumers’ confidence in domestic beef safety.

Creekstone Farms sued the government and won the first round in a low court.

In May 2007, Consumer Unions wrote to the USDA asking the agency not to appeal the March 29, 2007 low court ruling. Regardless, the government appealed to a federal appeals court to block the low court’s ruling that allows the meatpacker to conduct the test.

In the United States, less than 1 % of slaughtered cows are tested for mad cow disease under the USDA guidelines, according to USA Today. USDA argued that widespread testing does not guarantee food safety and could cause false positive results that scare consumers.

HhhhooooOOokaaayyy... my confidence is a bit shaken but maybe there's not that many mad cows out there. There shouldn't be any other concerns, right?: (my bold)

Milk and meat from cloned cows could hit grocery shelves in a few years if the FDA approves the process soon, as is expected.

But would the products be safe? Scientists and consumer advocates disagree on the answer.

The Food and Drug Administration has been wrestling for more than five years with the question of whether or not to allow the use of milk or meat from cloned cows, swine and sheep, with a voluntary ban on such products in place for now. Cloning companies and many scientists say the products are safe to eat, while consumer advocacy groups argue there are unaddressed concerns.

Several researchers told LiveScience that the FDA approval is inevitable. The Wall Street Journal reported last week that it could come as soon as this week.

But milk and meat from cloned animals is unlikely to hit grocery store shelves for a few years. Clones must grow up before products from them can be used. And since creating them is expensive, they will likely be used for breeding, not for direct consumption, experts say.

Cloning concerns

Reports of abnormalities, higher disease susceptibility and early deaths of clones have prompted many of the concerns about using their milk and meat. (Dolly, the sheep that was the first animal cloned by this process, was euthanized at the early age of six, though scientists at the institute that created her stated the disease she was suffering from was unrelated to her being a clone.)

Riot, South Koreans!! Go! Go!



crossposted at American Street

When you put a moron in charge...

WASHINGTON - The Bush administration is undermining the Environmental Protection Agency's ability to determine health dangers of toxic chemicals by letting nonscientists have a bigger — often secret — role, congressional investigators say in a report obtained by The Associated Press.

The administration's decision to give the Defense Department and other agencies an early role in the process adds to years of delay in acting on harmful chemicals and jeopardizes the program's credibility, the Government Accountability Office concluded.

At issue is the EPA's screening of chemicals used in everything from household products to rocket fuel to determine if they pose serious risk of cancer or other illnesses.

A new review process begun by the White House in 2004 is adding more speed bumps for EPA scientists, the GAO said in its report, which will be the subject of a Senate Environment Committee hearing Tuesday. A formal policy effectively doubling the number of steps was adopted two weeks ago.

Update: via Blue Girl of Blue Girl, Red State:

WASHINGTON - The Bush administration on Friday urged a federal appeals court to stop meatpackers from testing all their animals for mad cow disease, but a skeptical judge questioned whether the government has that authority.

The government seeks to reverse a lower court ruling that allowed Kansas-based Creekstone Farms Premium Beef to conduct more comprehensive testing to satisfy demand from overseas customers in Japan and elsewhere.

Less than 1 percent of slaughtered cows are currently tested for the disease under Agriculture Department guidelines. The agency argues that more widespread testing does not guarantee food safety and could result in a false positive that scares consumers.

"They want to create false assurances," Justice Department attorney Eric Flesig-Greene told a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.

But Creekstone attorney Russell Frye contended the Agriculture Department's regulations covering the treatment of domestic animals contain no prohibition against an individual company testing for mad cow disease, since the test is conducted only after a cow is slaughtered. He said the agency has no authority to prevent companies from using the test to reassure customers.

"This is the government telling the consumers, `You're not entitled to this information,'" Frye said.

It should be evident that the Bush administration really really really is not compassionately conservative... unless that really means drawing the blinds of their house while poor people writhe about on the ground dying from cancer from toxic chemicals or from Alzheimer's from mad cows....

Mad cow for elementary school lunches!

A non-ambulatory animal can be an indication of mad cow disease:

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- The U.S. Department of Agriculture on Sunday ordered the recall of 143 million pounds of frozen beef from a California slaughterhouse, the subject of an animal-abuse investigation, that provided meat to school lunch programs.

Officials said it was the largest beef recall in the United States, surpassing a 1999 ban of 35 million pounds of ready-to-eat meats. No illnesses have been linked to the newly recalled meat, and officials said the health threat was likely small.

The recall will affect beef products dating to Feb. 1, 2006, that came from Chino-based Westland/Hallmark Meat Co., the federal agency said.

Secretary of Agriculture Ed Schafer said his department has evidence that Westland did not routinely contact its veterinarian when cattle became non-ambulatory after passing inspection, violating health regulations.

[snip]

Federal officials suspended operations at Westland/Hallmark after an undercover video from the Humane Society of the United States surfaced showing crippled and sick animals being shoved with forklifts.

Two former employees were charged Friday. Five felony counts of animal cruelty and three misdemeanors were filed against a pen manager. Three misdemeanor counts - illegal movement of a non-ambulatory animal - were filed against an employee who worked under that manager. Both were fired.

It's simple. Time to start eating other meats than beef, or not eating meat at all.

Update 2/22: The horrific peek into the slaughter house:

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.

The USDA is ignoring testing for Mad Cow

Nobody is surprised by this, I hope....

Mad Cow Disease has now been discovered in the United States. Given the fact that the USDA only tests one cow out of every 2,000, no one really knows how many of these infected animals may have already entered the human food supply.

Sign the Petition

Join tens of thousands of citizens and sign the Mad Cow USA-Stop the Madness petition, demanding that the US Government adopt and enforce the same strict standards required by the European Union and Japan:

Mandatory testing for all cattle brought to slaughter, before they enter the food chain.

Ban the feeding of blood, manure, and slaughterhouse waste to animals.

Stop harassing farmers and food processors who are interested in independently testing their own beef.

I didn't know dioxin was a seasonal flavoring for beef....

(Via Americablog), Dioxin found in beef sent to South Korea. So what are they making us eat?

"South Korea has asked the United States to explain why a shipment of American beef rejected for having banned bone fragments also contained unacceptable levels of the toxic chemical dioxin, an official said Friday.

The discovery was the latest bad news for the U.S. cattle industry in South Korea, already dealing with the rejection of three recent shipments of beef for including banned bone fragments, which South Korea fears could potentially harbor mad cow disease."

You notice what the Department of Agriculture does? They criticize South Korea for rejecting the beef and ask to see their testing methodology. How dare they say no to mad cow flavored with dioxin!

Sounds like Bush is running the department, doesn't it?