In fact, the USDA, which now tests only 1 percent of all slaughtered cows, is planning to cut back on that effort. Crazier yet, it also intends to keep anyone else from conducting more tests.
One company wants to do exactly that. Creekstone Farms, a premium meatpacker based in Kansas, knows bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or BSE, can be deadly for business. After the first American case was discovered in 2003, some 58 countries banned shipments of American beef, costing Creekstone about $100 million in sales.
Those countries were dissatisfied with the safety measures in effect here. So Chief Executive Officer John Stewart decided to address health concerns in places such as Japan and South Korea by going beyond what the U.S. government requires of packers. He pledged to test all his cattle for mad cow in an effort to reassure nervous foreign consumers.
What he didn't account for was that his own government would bar him from doing what his customers want him to do. Creekstone's plan, it said, would undermine federal attempts to "maintain domestic and international confidence in U.S. cattle and beef products." To let the company adopt a more stringent regime would imply the USDA rules were inadequate.
The National Cattlemen's Beef Association agreed, complaining that "if you let one company step out and do that, other companies would have to follow." So last month, Creekstone filed a lawsuit requesting the right to cater to its customers.
