This weekend was a teaser to spring weather — lots of sun and mild temperatures. Many people were outside enoying the spring-like atmosphere and there was no doubt some barbeque’s going on. But, the US faced the biggest beef recall in U.S. History last year (2008) involving downer cows from a Chino, California slaughterhouse where 143 million pounds of beef were recalled. The California slaughterhouse is now the subject of an animal-abuse investigation. This incident disturbed farmers and non-farmers alike, and conjured up an inquiry into the “partial” ban of downer cows.
Basically downer cows were not allowed for food consumption if she was already collapsed. But, government inspectors were to allow the animal into the food supply if it had an acute injury, such as a broken leg, but showed no signs of BSE.
“As part of our commitment to public health, our Agriculture Department is closing a loophole in the system to ensure that diseased cows don’t find their way into the food supply,” Presiden Obama said in his weekly radio and video address.
I am glad this decision was made, in order to up hold a quality reputation for food safety and animal welfare this legislation will protect the good farmers and put to shame the mediocre ones. Ideally this will encourage producers to send animals to slaughter at a more appropriate time in the cows life. I mean by this, that the cows are not pushed to a point where cows are so weak they can not stand for the duration of the trailer ride.
”A hazard to public health,” was how Obama described America’s current food inspection system. He says, “many of these laws (food safety) haven’t been touched since they were written in the time of president Theodore Roosevelt.”
Roosevelt was in office till 1909! that’s 90 years old…clearly food quality and safety standards have not been a big concern to the white house, but they should be. How are farmers expected to produce safe food when they are only making a margin of a few pennies on some products. This reflects upon America’s cheap food policy, and the need for movement towards subsidies that reward quality, welfare and environmental practices. If farmers did not have to scour their costs of production to find a small loophole to make money, this would not be such a problem. But, this isn’t true of American agriculture. Americans for the most part are payed for how much milk they can produce at the cheapest price, and if they need to sell a downer cow to help keep their costs down well something is wrong with the system.
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