More on US beef

I blogged on AmCham's promotion of US beef earlier this month, and lo! the government has banned US beef imports. Retailers are yanking the products from the shelves, and AIT is out there in the best Bush fashion, re-assuring people that the beef is safe when everyone knows it is not. The Taipei Times, not normally an enthusiastic servant of US corporate interests, nevertheless attempted to serve up some wonderfully disingenuous writing in support of US beef, The Times follows the AIT line almost word for word:

What are the facts? For a start, the BSE case in the US is not a new one. It was a retest of an old sample dating from last year, when the animal died. Under current US regulations, the animal could not have entered the food chain. it was too old -- over 30 months -- and was born before the regulations on the use of beef by-products in cattle feed were in place. This animal, as the American Institute in Taiwan pointed out, has nothing to do with the beef that was until last week imported into Taiwan. Add to this the fact that the World Animal Health Organization (WAHO) stated last month that boneless beef from cattle under 30 months old -- the only US beef available in Taiwan -- can be freely traded without risk to consumers, even from BSE-infected countries (as long as certain safeguards are in place, which in the US' case they are) and a reasonable person soon comes to the conclusion that US beef poses no danger.

Given these conditions, the government certainly caved in to pressure -- but not pressure from the US, but from unscrupulous, populist politicians. It should not have banned US beef, but explained clearly why such a ban was unnecessary. Those who do not believe in the WAHO's science or the effectiveness of US slaughterhouse regulation could simply choose not to eat US beef. Let the market decide. Which last weekend it did; consumers flocked to the stores to purchase US beef, expecting that stores would cut prices to get the meat off their shelves before they might be compelled to take it off. At least the public has shown some common sense.

Problem: the Times simply ignores the real issue, which is that the US beef supply is unsafe, because US government regulations on the issue are a joke. To quote from the editorial above: what are the facts? John Stauber, an activist on this issue for many years, notes in CommonDreams this week:

The so-called 'firewall feed ban' to prevent cattle from contracting the disease in the United States is a joke, and more like pouring gasoline on a fire. Hundreds of millions of pounds of cattle blood, cattle fat, and the meat, blood, fat and bone meal from pigs and chickens are legally fed to cattle each year on US farms and ranches and feedlots. American cattle are also being fed a million tons a year of chicken litter and feces contaminated with cattle meat and bone meal. These are practices that can spread mad cow disease and are banned in countries like England and Japan where there is a real firewall feed ban.

The US mad cow testing system seems designed to cover up mad cow disease rather than find it. Other countries test most or all of their cattle before human consumption for food safety purposes. The United States tests a small percentage of the 36 million cattle a year slaughtered and put into the human and animal feed chain. Most animals infected with mad cow disease will look healthy and be slaughtered and put into the food system without testing. Only testing millions of US cattle a year will reveal how much mad cow disease there really is in the United States.

The point is that the US system doesn't work, the Bush Administration doesn't want it to work, and ironically, only concrete pressure from the outside world can create real change in the US position. The US government apparently cares little for its citizens' health, but it does care about the exports of US corporations. Go Taiwan! And keep the pressure on.

UPDATE: June 30. Ni Howdy has a great but opposite take.

UPDATE: July 1: Activist John Stauber has more to say on Mad Cow at CommonDreams:

To this day, the real 'firewall feed ban' necessary to stop mad cow disease in the United State has not been constructed. Officials of the United States Department of Agriculture simply lie to the press and public when they say, as USDA veterinarian John Clifford did on June 29, that a "ruminant to ruminant feed ban" prevents cattle protein from being fed to cattle in the US, cutting off the spread of the disease. In reality, as Clifford well knows, US animal feed regulations allow hundreds of millions of pounds of cattle blood and fat to be fed back to cattle each year, including the widespread weaning of calves on cattle blood protein in calf milk replacer and milk formula. In addition, one million tons a year of "poultry litter" is shoveled from barn floors at chicken factories and fed to cattle, although the spilled and defecated chicken feed in the litter can contain up to 30% mammalian meat and bone meal.

In Mad Cow USA we explain how and why Texas cattlemen, at the urging of now-governor Rick Perry, sued Oprah Winfrey in early 1996 for the Texas crime of disparaging beef. Oprah's sin was to host a balanced program on mad cow risks in the United States that aired April 16, 1996 and featured Dr. Gary Weber of the National Cattlemen's Beef Association and Dr. Will Hueston of the USDA. Also on her show was former cattle rancher Howard Lyman who for the first time before a national audience revealed that cattle slaughterhouse waste was (and is today) being fed to cattle in the United States and that the United States would develop mad cow disease if the practice continued. As we now know, Lyman's warning and prediction was accurate and mad cow disease was probably spreading in Texas at the time of Oprah's show.

Yes, it's true Taiwan's slaughterhouses are a disaster and meat processing probably less safe than in the US. But that's simply not relevant to the issue of whether Taiwan should import beef from regions that are not implementing proper feeding practices.

It is also true that the mad dow cases are being used in a very Chinese way -- blaming the foreigner for the problems of local society. This kind of scapegoating is a common official practice, though I note that the Taiwanese are not so apt as their leaders, when thinking about their own society, to blame others. Remember when Mayor Ma of Taipei had a Japanese man arrested at a local hotel for soliciting a prostitute who turned out to be from mainland China? Subtext: prostitution is a foreign problem. Likewise, there is some of that going on here, as Ni Howdy more or less points out. But the fact is that US beef is probably not safe, not as long as feed practices remain unsafe.
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