has there ever been any discussion here on meat traceability...? i know it's a big issue in the EU where traceability standards either are being worked on or have already been adopted that are FAR more stringent than in the u.s... (why am i not surprised...?)
a colleague i met while working on an economic development project in macedonia was a retired meat packing executive... he shared with me what i thought was a no-nonsense idea for keeping track of the origin of any meat, poultry, or fish product... actually it would allow tracking of any formerly live species used for human consumption... it's so simple and elegant, you would think it would already be in use...
given the state of today's dna technology, every formerly live species food product would have a dna sample taken and recorded in a database along with all other the elements necessary for tracking... in the event that a consumer product was found to be tainted or responsible for causing illness, the dna of that product could be then used to make a match with the dna sample in the database...
as simple and effective as it sounds, my friend recounted numerous instances of angry rejection when he would pose it to feed-lot operators, industry association representatives, and fellow executives in the meat-packing industry who, as he told it, were adamantly opposed to "traceability..." when i asked why, he laughed... "c'mon," he said... "why in the world would they want to sign on to something that would make it easy to determine where meat came from...?" "avoidance of liability?" i suggested... "damn right!" he said... and there ya have it...
(cross-posted at the Center for Media and Democracy http://www.prwatch.org/ )