Jello wrote:
The USDA has never tested all meat, ever. Nor have meatpackers. Its a spot check system. Always has been. Checking every piece of meat is no more practical than checking every cargo container. Absurd.

Mike the Usurper wrote:
You misunderstand. A meatpacker WANTS to test all of their meat (I suppose so they can slap a 100% tested sticker on it) and the USDA is trying to block them from doing so.

This is an interesting argument. The article notes the USDA's justification as : "The Agriculture Department regulates the test and argued that widespread testing could lead to a false positive that would harm the meat industry."

This bears analysis I think. In what way could more testing harm the meat industry? This notion of a false positive is pretty silly I think, but there is a regulatory concern. All this particular meatpacker can claim legitimately is that all of their cows are tested for BSE... any further claim (e.g. "100% Safe!") would be dangerous and probably illegal.

The "harm" I see is the market pressure on the other packers. My attitude is that this is a scenario where the market will better serve the public than will government regulation. I am *agressively* not a believer in a pure market solution to all or even most problems (e.g. enforcing the fact that *some* testing must be done, and determining how much testing is minimal, *is* a regulartory task, and a good and valuable one). In this case, however, the market will decide. If testing 100% of cows is too expensive for the market to bear, it won't happen. If they can do the testing cheaply enough that the market will bear it, then we get safer beef. Where's the loss? Why the need to forcibly deny the market a chance to work in a situation for which it actually is suited?

RE: U.S. government fights to keep meatpackers from testing all slaughtered cattle for mad cow - International Herald Tribune