Why Can't We Buy "BSE-Free" Beef? 2008-06-20 18:16
Today's Editorial of the Los Angeles Times introduces us to an interesting story of a U.S. beef producer that wanted to screen all of its cows for mad-cow disease (BSE). Creekstone Farms, a beef producer in Kansas, built a state-of-the-art lab in 2004 to test every single cow for BSE. The plan was to market their beef as "Certified BSE-Free", so that anyone concerned about BSE could buy from Creekstone with peace of mind. The U.S. Department of Agriculture, however, refused to sell a sufficient number of testing kits to Creekstone. USDA currently tests only 1% of slaughtered cows, and its official position is that this is more than enough to detect BSE. According to USDA, Creekstone Farms shouldn't be permitted to test all of its cows because that would "undermine" the government's official position. What the heck?
the beef section in a U.S. supermarket. Yes, our American friends: this article is about your health and safety just as much as it is about ours.
According to the LA Times, there's a good reason why Korea, Japan, Europe, and a lot of other countries don't like to import U.S. beef, despite the fact that there has never been more than a handful of isolated cases of BSE in America. We who have heard all sorts of stuff about the U.S. beef industry just don't trust the safety of U.S. beef. We think you, Americans, are being thoroughly deceived about the safety of your own food, by some of the more greedy among you. We don't want to be so deceived, and we also want you to know that you've been deceived so that you can take measures to protect yourselves. The controversy in the Republic of Korea over U.S. beef isn't all about protectionism or anti-Americanism as some have made it out to be. It's about how the safety of the beef we eat -- and the beef you eat -- has been left in the hands of those who are the least likely to be concerned about it.
Back to the Creekstone case. Creekstone wasn't asking for tax money to help test its cows. Creekstone paid for the construction of the lab, and it was more than willing to pay for all the testing kits. The cost of testing cows for BSE was estimated to be around $20 per animal, or $0.10 per pound of meat. Creekstone thought that this additional cost was worth paying, because many consumers would pay more for "Certified BSE-Free" beef. They had made a sensible business decision. But then the U.S. government stepped in.
WHY?
Was it because testing every single cow would increase the possibility of discovering a case of BSE in America? But consumers have the right to know whether or not BSE exists in America! Or was it because BSE is harder to detect in younger cows, as USDA suggested at one time? But even if that's the case, what's wrong for a company to test at its own cost? Or was it because larger beef producers -- who are always lobbying hard -- didn't want to face a new kind of competition, or in other words, didn't want to implement a similar system themselves? Why wouldn't they want to? Why not, if they knew that their beef was safe?
You can find more information about the ongoing case between Creekstone and USDA here. Meanwhile, the beef industry in the U.S. has been exerting a tremendous amount of pressure upon the government. Their lobbying led to the creation of the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act in 2006, a peculiar legislation aimed squarely at the protection of the beef industry from animal rights activism, investigative journalism, and various other kinds of scrutiny. Okay, we all know that terrorism is bad. Every country has laws to keep terrorists at bay. AETA also allows peaceful demonstrations against certain aspects of the beef industry, or else it would violate the First Amendment. But why does the "Animal Enterprise" need a special law for itself? Why can't the usual laws against terrorism and sabotage do the job for them as they do for every other industry? The very existence of AETA makes everyone suspect that the beef industry has something to hide. And as long as the U.S. beef industry continues to play a dirty game, whoever can afford not to buy from them will not buy from them.
Variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (vCJD) is what you can get if you eat certain parts of an animal that has BSE. Not only is it difficult to detect and impossible to cure, but currently in the United States, physicians are not required to report cases of vCJD to the government. This makes people suspect that the three officially recognized cases represent only the tip of the iceberg, and that the U.S. public is still exposed to the danger of BSE/vCJD. Again, our protests have implications that go beyond Korea. You are at risk of a rare but deadly disease, and your government is doing nothing to ensure that this disease is kept at bay. Is anyone still wondering why everyone else hates U.S. beef -- why 1,000,000 Koreans had to rise up against a government over this seemingly trivial issue?
Andy Groseta (red circle), President of the U.S. National Cattlemen's Beef Association, sits near the front row during President Lee Myung-Bak's inauguration ceremony on February 25, 2008. Why did Mr. Groseta bother to fly halfway across the globe to attend the inauguration ceremony of a foreign President? Perhaps the shocking beef deal of April 18 was already decided upon at this time, so he wanted to say thanks to Lee? (Korea used to import almost $1 billion of U.S beef per year before the BSE crisis broke out, so there's a good reason to say thanks if Korea opens the door again!)
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