Ag Dept. Cites Plants on Mad-Cow Rules

[deminks]

By LIBBY QUAID, Associated Press Writer 13 minutes ago

WASHINGTON - Inspectors have found more than 1,000 violations of rules aimed at preventing mad cow disease from reaching humans, the Agriculture Department said Monday. No contaminated meat reached consumers, the agency said.

The rules were created in response to the nation's first case of mad cow disease in December 2003. They require that brains, spinal cords and other nerve parts — which can carry mad cow disease — be removed when older cows are slaughtered. The at-risk tissues are removed from cows older than 30 months because infection levels are believed to rise with age.

The Agriculture Department said Monday it had cited beef slaughterhouses or processing plants 1,036 times for failing to comply with rules on removing those tissues, which are commonly called specified risk materials or SRMs. The violations occurred over 17 months, ending in May.

The number of violations amounts to less than 1 percent of all citations at those plants, said USDA spokeswoman Lisa Wallenda Picard.

"At no point in time did SRMs get to consumers," Picard said. "There was not one example of that."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050816/ap_on_he_me/mad_cow

[merwin]

1. Someone from Texas let more than one mad cow slip into the White House.

[Divernan]

2. Ag Dept. admits over 103,000 violations in 17 months! ! !

Some of these spin doctors are SO stupid - maybe they already have mad cow disease. Read this press release carefully. They actually BRAG that there are only 1036 violations of mad cow regs at "these plants" (note they don't tell us how MANY plants - if all these violations are occuring at just a few plants - they should be shut down).

Next they crow that this represents "less than one percent" of all citations "at those plants". The math couldn't be simpler. If 1% equals 1036 violations in only 17 months,
then 100% equals ONE HUNDRED THREE THOUSAND AND SIX HUNDRED VIOLATIONS/
103,600

in only 17 months at JUST THOSE PLANTS.

Even more OUTRAGEOUSLY, note that the article only refers to the offending plants receiving "citations". We're talking a paper slap on the wrist. You know how THAT just terrifies (not) the big meatpackers. Unless you impose punitive fines and/or closings on these plants they are not going to change their practises one iota.

Please read the whole article for criticisms of the Ag Dept. We already know they have fired their own inspectors who complained about the violations. And the regs themselves are full of holes. In England, they have found cattle as young as one year old infected with the disease. But here in the good ole USofA, the Ag dept. doesn't even require inspection except of "older" beef. And since it can take years for the disease to evidence itself in a human host, little Miss Picard's claim that
specified risk materials did not get to customers is pure grade A, prime BS. There's no way she could know that.

[goforit]

3. Hmmm...hasn't reached consumers?..Bullshit!!!

Didn't they just have five similar cases of Creutzfeldt-Jacob
disease in Idaho?

This is most certainly the variation of Mad cow.

Mad Cow is so similar to dementia, that the only way to determine if
you have it is to do a brain autopsy.

Who the hell is going to do that while they are alive and sick
with a possible Mad Cow diagnosis.

[daleo]

5. That's just bad luck

A cluster of five natural CJD events is bound to happen now and again. After all, the odds of it happening are about one in a million billion billion - what could be more natural?

[Cathyclysmic]

10. I agree...complete BS

that our food has not been affected.

[flvegan]

4. It's never too late to go vegan.

Happy to help anyone with questions, etc.

[nodehopper]

6. or you could just not eat mass-produced beef, like me.

[LeftyMom]

7. That might provide some protection

Provided your sourceof ex-cows has them processed separately (in a dedicated facility, the protocol for killing BSE prions isn't well suited to a slaughterhouse- it involves several hours of extremely high heat and immersionin a vat of lye for each exposed object) from the possibly contaminated stuff and that the rancher is on the up and up and all employees at the ranch, feedlot and slaughterhouse are following the rules to the letter.

Personally that's a few too many ifs for me to risk my life and my brain. :scared:

[nodehopper]

8. still, vegan is quite a leap, that was the point I was trying to make

I haven't eaten beef in the US in about two years. But it irks me a bit every time there is some kind of health food scare that it gets used as an opportunity to proselytize: be a vegan! be a vegetarian!

or, you know, just eat carefully.

[flvegan]

9. I read and re-read my post, and

I don't see where I did anything but make a suggestion to the general public reading the original post. Did I proselytize? No.

So be irked. You probably get irked an awful lot, considering.