Creekstone vs Big Beef and the FDA

In whole, with a fisking.

By LIBBY QUAID, AP Food and Farm Writer Wed Mar 22, 6:51 PM ET
WASHINGTON - A Kansas meatpacker has sparked an industry fight by proposing
testing all the company's cattle for mad cow disease.

Creekstone Farms Premium Beef wants to look for the disease in every
animal it processes. The Agriculture Department has said no. Creekstone says it
intends to sue the department.
"Our customers, particularly our Asian
customers, have requested it over and over again," chief executive John Stewart
said in an interview Wednesday. "We feel strongly that if customers are asking
for tested beef, we should be allowed to provide that."
Creekstone planned a
news conference Thursday in Washington to discuss the lawsuit.
The department
and larger meat companies oppose comprehensive testing, saying it cannot assure
food safety. Testing rarely detects the disease in younger animals, the source
of most meat.

I think the testing would assure all of the Japanese that, as a company, Creekstone takes their health serious and would be more than willing to dish out the money to do the testing.

"There isn't any nation in the world that requires 100 percent testing,"
department spokesman Ed Loyd said Wednesday.Larger companies worry that
Japanese buyers would insist on costly testing and that a suspect result might
scare consumers away from eating beef.

For one thing, they are not buying our meat already! And the second. Creekstone has said in the past that they loose $100 dollars on each cow a day because the Japanese buy parts that Americans reject. So if they can spend $37 a head to test they make a net profit of $63 per cow. The FDA and the major beef companies don't want to have that bite in profits and would rather starve out both Japan and the the smaller companies than do any sort of testing. This is where free market should be allowed to work the magic in the business world. Not the FDA.

Japan was the most lucrative foreign market for American beef until the
first U.S. case of mad cow disease prompted a ban in 2003. The ban cost
Creekstone nearly one-third of its sales and led the company to slash production
and lay off about 150 people, Stewart said.
When Japan reopened its market
late last year, Creekstone resumed shipments. Japan has halted shipments again,
after finding American veal cuts with backbone. These cuts are eaten in the U.S.
but are banned in Japan.

Both the bigger beef companies and the FDA say they know what is better for the industry. Right before they screw up and get meat banned again.

Stewart said that when trade resumes with Japan, Creekstone is in a position to
rehire the laid-off workers and then some.
Creekstone would need government
certification for its plan to test each animal at its Arkansas City, Kan.,
plant. The department refused the license request in 2004.
The U.S. has been
testing around 1 percent of the 35 million head of cattle slaughtered each year,
although officials have been planning to scale back that level of testing.
An
industry official said the U.S. testing program should reassure customers inside
and outside the United States.

I am beginning to think there may be more contamination in our cattle than previously thought. Either the FDA is wanting to protect the larger cattle industry from smaller sellers. Or they have more mad cow problems than they want the public to know about. Remember, Americans for the most part do not eat the parts that mad cow comes from. So they may think there is little need for them to know about it and curb testing. Nevermind the fact that they found another mad cow-infected animal just two weeks ago. It would also explain why they don't want to allow a company to take its own risk in testing and hiring more employees and become more successful.

"The U.S. risk of
BSE is miniscule and declining, our proactive
prevention strategies have worked and the safety of American beef is assured,"
said J. Patrick Boyle, president of the American Meat Institute.
He was
referring to the formal name for mad cow disease, bovine spongiform
encephalopathy, or BSE.
While individual companies in Japan may want
comprehensive testing, Japan's government is not asking for it.

Nah! Japan and the U.S. have been allies for decades. The Japanese Government doesn't want to hurt that over economics. Especially if they rely on us for protection against North Korea and China.

Japan does have lingering questions about the shipment of prohibited veal, even
after the U.S. sent a lengthy report to Tokyo explaining the mistake was an
isolated incident. The report blamed the company, Brooklyn-based Atlantic Veal
& Lamb, and a government inspector for misunderstanding new rules for
selling beef to Japan.

Here os a government entity that wants us all to defer judgment calls and expertise to them. When they themselves can't understand that one slab of meat is not suppose to ship as opposed to another. Government ineptitude at its best!

Japan's agriculture minister, Shoichi Nakagawa, said Wednesday that further
talks are needed.
"We do want to keep going back and forth with the U.S.
over this issue," he said. "We want the U.S. side to squarely answer our
questions."

Sounds like someone is doing a square dance around the issue.

The Agriculture Department announced Wednesday evening it will send a team led
by Acting Under Secretary Chuck Lambert to Tokyo next week for talks.
The
U.S. has had three cases of mad cow disease. The first appeared in December 2003
in a Washington state cow that had been imported from Canada. The second was
confirmed last June in a Texas-born cow, and the third was confirmed last week
in an Alabama cow.
Japan has had two dozen cases of BSE.
Mad cow disease
is a brain-wasting ailment in cattle. In people, eating meat products
contaminated with BSE is linked to more than 150 deaths worldwide, mostly in
Britain, from a deadly human nerve disorder, variant
Creutzfeldt-Jakob
Disease'.

_____________________

Really, the problems with all-out testing is minimal. Except to the competition who does not want to pay the money, or would lose money if the smaller companies gained more contracts. This is just big brother protectionism.