The NY Times has
a big story on their website tonight on the caper involving this latest mad cow.
But you could have read about it last night right here in my diary Mad Cows and Bum Steers.
I usually shy away from firing my own pistols into the air like that. But, dad gum, any journalist could have had this story a day earlier if they had just done a bit of digging ... and covered this story with a heapin' pile of skepticism. Because, if there's anything that the Keystone Kowpokes running the beef protection program have earned it's skepticism. (That's the polite word I thought of.)
This is how the NY Times story starts out:
Although the Agriculture Department confirmed Friday that a cow that died last year was infected with mad cow disease, a test the agency conducted seven months ago indicated that the animal had the disease. The result was never publicly disclosed.
The delay in confirming the United States' second case of mad cow disease seems to underscore what critics of the agency have said for a long time: that there are serious and systemic problems in the way the Agriculture Department tests animals for mad cow.
Yep. It turns out that the Ag Department scientists ran some extra tests back in November that showed some "abnormalities." But the Ag folks say, as reported here last night, those extra tests were just an "academic" exercise, and they didn't report their funny findings to anyone else.
Does this sound like the performance our country should expect from the folks running our mad cow surveillance program?
Now, there's a whole cattle car full of unexplored questions regarding mad cow. The Mighty AP shed a bit of light on one set of questions today, but their story - U.S. Seeks Source of Mad Cow Infection - served to offer up even more questions.
In this story, Libby Quaid reports that USDA folks are using DNA analysis to try to make heads or tails of the different cow parts from five animals that got mixed together in a barrel with the parts from this formerly-not-mad-but-now-confirmed-mad cow. (I repeat my Dave Barry schtick from last night: I AM NOT MAKING THIS UP!)
Parts from the diseased animal and four other cows were supposed to be kept in separate waste barrels, but some of the waste was combined, [USDA chief vet John] Clifford said.
Department officials think they have found the right herd. To confirm that, they must find relatives of the dead cow and test DNA.
The story goes on to say things like more confusion arose because this cow apparently was covered with shit when it arrived at the slaughterhouse, and folks therefore got mixed up as to what kind of cow this was. (I'll say it again, I AM NOT MAKING THIS UP!! Read for yerself here.)
But the question I have is this: CAN'T ANYONE ELSE REMEMBER THE OFFICIALS SAYING THIS COW HAD BEEN INCINERATED??!!
Well, gee wiz. It took about three seconds of Googling to find this treasure:
The cow was incinerated last fall and never made it into the U.S. food supply, said Agriculture Secretary Michael Johanns.
So what in the hell are bits from this cow doin' in a barrel with bits from four other cows if it was incinerated?!
And another question: If the Ag folks can't even tell us for sure at this point what breed this cow was, or can't tell us from which animal these mad cow infected samples came from, then just how in the heck can they say the mad cow didn't go through the slaughterhouse?
I guess that's a question for another day's newspaper.