With the USDA in charge, bioterrorism wannabe Osama Bin Laden can just kick back in his cave and let Anne Veneman do his dirty work.
Watching the local 11 pm news last night (yes, yes I know, what do I expect) one might dismiss the mad cow/BSE story as a piffle. Over footage of a poor cow staggering about (implication: this is the sick cow -- we've found it, it's in custody, not to worry !) we saw the aggie secretary spending more time reassuring us that eating beef is completely safe, and that she was going to serve beef on Christmas, than in giving the details of the story.
Which would have included (as the Globe article stated this morning) that this was a downer cow -- a cow too sick to walk into the slaughterhouse under its own steam -- whose BSE test was sent off weeks ago. And which was immediately sent into the slaughterhouse and made into meat. Meat that is now being tracked down for a recall.
And tell me again why it should it ever be OK to make a "downer" cow into food ? Oh, yeah -- the legislature declined to pass a bill prohibiting it !
And why on earth would a "downer cow" be sent into the food chain even before the BSE test results return ?
Oh, yeah -- it's just a pathetically inadequate epidemiologic "screening" test run on 20,000 cows a year (out of how many millions ?), not a test designed to protect the public from any one specific sick cow.
Take home lesson ?
The government exists to protect corporations and the mainstream news media exists to protect the government.
Heaven help us all.
Obvious lessons in this:
Avoid TV news. Its function is to lie, and shill and pander. There are better sources of information available.
Go vegan. It's kinder and safer and more healthful.
No comments:
Post a Comment