Dancing With Mad Cow Disease: BSE US Case Confirmed

Predictably, now that a second case of Mad Cow Disease has been confirmed in the United States, officialdom is telling us we’re safe.

Yeah, right.

Predictably, they are spinning the numbers and the facts with a bias that is less than honest about the possible causes and potentially lethal consequences of BSE in the US food chain.

Once again, a Friday (June 24 2005) was chosen to tell America as little as possible about the confirmation of this second case of Mad Cow Disease.

Giving new meaning to the word transparency, we were told nothing about where the case occurred, why it took many months to have it confirmed, why initial US tests failed to provide a definitive answer, and why independent overseas tests were finally ordered.

But we were told by Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns that we have a better chance of being hit by a car while crossing the street to the grocery store than we do of contracting the human form of BSE (Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy).

That actually sounds perfectly reasonable to me, given that the millions of cars using American streets do not carry a lethal and mysteriously transferable strain of Mad Driver Disease.

In fact, every driver has been tested for sanity before they got on to the human road chain.

Not so with beef animals.

With typical mini-focus, officials tell us that two cases of BSE in the US (the first was officially discovered in 2003) are actually proof that their testing procedures are working exactly as they should. After all, two cases in over 300,000 tests is statistically insignificant, wouldn’t you say?

That’s sort of what they say.

So how was it that initial tests on this latest confirmed case were actually inconclusive?
Why was it that several months later, the USDA suddenly decided to have more tests done overseas?

Could it be that they were influenced by a UPI report and a former employee who claims he was told never to reveal any evidence that BSE might already be in America – and was later forced out of the department? (See the following link – "Cover Up Allegations Being Investigated").

For its part, the USDA stresses that it is doing a lot of adequate testing. But what they do not say is that there are millions and millions of animals which are NOT tested.

Nor do they remind us that they refused to instigate any serious testing at all before there was undeniable proof that BSE was here.

Can you make sense of that? Would you consider it reasonable for your local cop to tell you there is no proof that there is any crime in your neighborhood – and the proof that there is no proof is that they have not been looking for proof?

And then when it becomes undeniable that there actually is crime in your neighborhood, they tell you everything is under control because they arrested two criminals in the last two years.

Oh yes, the reason the arrests were so easy was that the criminals were crippled and dying when they found them – which is proof that all criminals, to be classified as such, must be crippled and dying when found.

Which means there is no danger to you or your family or community from all those healthy looking uncriminal types walking around out there.

Well here’s some proof that BSE is a serious human disorder (in humans it’s known as vCJD, or variant Creutzfeldt Jakob Disease).

It has killed hundreds of people in other countries.

Naturally, the US officials charged with keeping tabs on BSE now that they have finally and reluctantly admitted it is in this country for certain, are not going to broadcast that fact too loudly.

They will play down the fact that major trading partners have renewed their bans on US beef – at a cost of billions to the American beef industry.

They will, more importantly, do everything they can to deny us any information at all about the number of Americans already dead because their brains turned into spongy masses after eating infected beef products from animals that somehow skipped by the official testing program.

Let’s be cool.

Let’s cross the street to the grocery store and buy lots and lots of beef.

Not from the certified organic section of course.

Why do that when we can support our beef farmers by buying what they have produced (with the help of blood and poultry litter to boost their animal growth rates).

Isn’t it true that the USDA (the department that took over eight months to complete definitive tests on just one sick cow – and finally needed someone from overseas to do it for them) has really got it all together?

Yep. We can trust those guys with our lives. With our children’s lives.

Sure can.

So let’s do the Mad Cow Dance.

© 2005 Michael Knight

PS - How serious does the USDA think this BSE thing is? Well here's a shocker from that UPI article: by Medical Correspondent Steve Mitchell: "The USDA plans to scale back its BSE testing program in 2006. Its proposed mad cow testing budget for fiscal year 2006 would fund testing of only 40,000 animals."

Yep. We're in safe hands.