It's now Tuesday night in Asia. At this moment, a million South Koreans are holding a candlelight vigil in Seoul to protest the importation of US beef. This is but another example of the heavy-handed and stupid foreign policy of this administration.
The failure to test American cattle for Bovine Spongiform Encephalitis, or Mad Cow disease, is at the heart of America's agricultural export problems in Asia.
American exporters want to test their cattle before exporting them. Why don't they?
The Food and Drug Administration will not let them. So much for non-interference in the marketplace. Instead of allowing American beef exporters to test their beef for BSE before exporting, American negotiators instead try to club the Koreans and the Japanese into submission by threatening retaliatory action if American beef is banned.
As a result, even when it is marketed abroad, consumers avoid it. On the whole, American beef does have somewhat better flavor than Australian beef, but the Australians have never permitted the use of cattle feed made from animal carcasses, so they have never had a case of BSE. Even McDonald's Japan advertises that its hamburgers are 100% Australian beef!
The question, of course, is why do the Bushies forbid testing for BSE? They cite cost concerns, but the importing countries are willing to pay the extra $20 per head (I'm not sure of the exact cost; it may be more like $5). They also claim that it is unnecessary, because the limited testing that goes on will statistically find BSE if it is present in the US food supply. Polling one in 40,000 voters to find voter preference may produce a statistically valid result, but testing one in 40,000 carcasses is not a valid testing system: it leaves 39,999 cattle untested.
The real answer to my question, then, is that the FDA fails to test not because they will not find BSE in the food supply, they do not test because they know that they will find Mad Cow disease.
P.S. The Texas Cattlemen's Association is a long-time contributor to Bushco.
Hence, a million South Koreans protest in the street and the South Korean cabinet resigns, all because the US will not compromise and test the meat they export.