Mad Cow Disease

June 14, 2005

Another Mad Cow! At least it looks like that might be the case. One more test will be made to either confirm or deny the BSE. For the meat industry and especially the beef industry this roller coaster has been a nightmare. Just when it looked like we would finally get our export markets open again --- wham! We are hit with this. It will take as long as two weeks to get a conclusive test result. Fortunately at this point, it looks as if Mexico will not close their border to our beef. We just got Taiwan open and I don't know what their reaction will be. And Japan -- don't hold your breath waiting for them.

Just so everyone can feel safe, none of the meat from the animal went into the food supply. It was a downer and the whole carcass was incinerated. In fact, all of this took place last October. After an inclusive test, a negative test -- and all that time we tested again and got a positive... now we are testing again.

The Organic Consumers Association, PETA and all the wild eyed consumer groups are hysterical about this -- Mad Cow . Well, big deal!

In the whole world only 160 people have died from the human form of mad cow. Most of them in Europe where they were eating diseased cows for years. We have not done that. We have never had a case of a human getting mad cow from eating beef.

It's time we put this whole risk thing into perspective. 160 people dying from mad cow in a world of 6 billion people that doesn't even register.

We are testing 375,000 animals per year, and downer cattle are banned from the food supply.

The time has come to end the hysteria over 1 or 2 sick cows out of 100 million -- do the arithmetic.

Our beef if safe to eat. You my get struck by lightening, but you won't get mad cow disease.

Until next week, I am John Block from Washington.