The article Charade posted has a lot of good information, but note the date of April 16, 2004 - the Gwinnett Post article, although brief, is March 24, 2006 (nearly two years later).
There is only one reason NOT to allow this company to test it's own beef - the fear that Mad Cow Disease will be found in American beef and what that will mean for the US Beef Industry. Simply put, our government is putting the Beef Industry before the health and welfare of the citizens.
Company's Mad Cow Tests Blocked
April 16, 2004 The Washington Post by Marc Kaufman
To Creekstone Farms manager Bill Fielding, his company's idea does not seem unreasonable. In order to satisfy its very important customers in Japan -- customers the company needs to survive -- Creekstone wants to test for mad cow disease every one of the cattle it slaughters.
To do that, Creekstone has spent more than $500,000 to build the first mad cow testing lab in an American slaughterhouse, and it has hired seven chemists and biologists to operate it. The company made the investment after Fielding returned from a trip to Japan convinced that officials there would lift their ban on American beef -- imposed after an infected cow was found in Washington state last December -- only if American companies adopt the Japanese practice of testing every animal.
But there is a big obstacle in the way of Creekstone's mad cow initiative: The U.S. Department of Agriculture will not allow it.
The company has all the equipment it needs, but it does not have the kit of chemical reagents needed to run the tests. In the United States, the USDA controls the sale of those kits, and the agency ruled last week that only labs in the U.S. government's testing program can buy them.
"That the USDA is standing in our way makes no sense," Fielding said. "Their position flies in the face of the basic rule of business -- that the customer is always right, and our job is to meet their demands."
As a small, upscale slaughterhouse and meatpacker, Creekstone already does for its domestic and foreign customers many things that competitors do not do. It specializes in premium-quality Black Angus beef, accepts fewer and fewer animals that have been fed antibiotics or hormones, and can trace the origin of each animal it receives.
USDA officials say that they sympathize with Creekstone and similar operations hurt by the bans imposed by Japan and other nations, but that agreeing to the company's request could imply there is a safety issue with American beef and usher in an era of expensive testing that has no scientific justification.
The issue is not the effectiveness of the testing itself, as Creekstone would be working under the auspices of an academic lab that the USDA has approved for mad cow testing. Rather, the agency objects to the very idea of testing every animal, including younger ones.
Following the advice of an international panel of mad cow experts, USDA officials say, the agency has put together an expanded plan to test as many as 250,000 animals over the next 18 months -- a national effort to determine whether mad cow disease is spreading through the American herd.
The agency has also followed the advice of the international panel in limiting the testing to cattle more than 30 months old, because they are most at risk of having the infection. Because most of the cattle that Creekstone slaughters are less than 30 months old, the company's petition to begin testing challenges several government policies.
"I can very much empathize with the situation of the company, and I understand their perspective," said Peter Fernandez, associate administrator of the USDA's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service. "But our mandate is to stick to the science when it comes to putting together a surveillance system, and ours is to test a limited number of animals older than 30 months."
Fielding knows his petition creates difficulties for the agency, and he is trying to find compromises. But the USDA, he fears, does not understand how bleak his company's prospects are. If he does not get permission to test soon, he said, his company will face bankruptcy and almost 800 employees will lose their jobs.
"They always talk about the need to follow good science, and I have no problem with that," said Fielding, the company's chief operating officer. "But how would the science be hurt if we did more tests and helped them gather more information about mad cow disease?"
The company's plight has been taken up by local congressman Todd Tiahrt (R-Kan.,) who says it is essential that Creekstone be given the right to test.
"USDA made a decision based on old-school bureaucratic thinking that may well end up with us losing millions of customers and hundreds of American jobs," Tiahrt said. "They're afraid of change and new technologies, and that's just not acceptable." He says, however, that others in the Kansas congressional delegation disagree.
A further complication is that the Japanese ban on American beef has become an increasingly complex and contentious trade issue. In an effort to reopen the Japanese market, USDA Secretary Ann M. Veneman wrote earlier this month to Japan's agriculture minister, Yoshiyuki Kamei, asking to discuss the beef export ban under the auspices of the World Organization for Animal Health. That body has already said that testing all animals for mad cow disease, or bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), is not necessary. The Japanese quickly turned down Veneman's offer to meet.
"I was expecting that you would make an appropriate proposal that is in accordance with Japanese consumers' wishes," Kamei wrote back. He said Veneman's offer appeared to compromise progress already made in ongoing consultations between the two nations.
Japan's intense sensitivity over the issue began in 2001, when mad cow disease was first detected in an animal there. Since then, universal testing there has found 10 more infected animals, and few have had the characteristics that normally put an animal at high risk.
While all American beef exporters have been hurt by the ban on sales abroad, Creekstone is especially vulnerable because it is small -- with less than 1 percent of the market -- and it only packs beef. The big players in the business -- companies such as Tyson Foods, Swift & Co. and Smithfield Foods -- also sell pork and chicken and can weather the beef ban much better.
If Japan will not buy their beef, the more diversified companies can sell pork, which they are doing now at a tidy profit. As a result, Fielding says, the beef export ban works to the advantage of the big firms and could end up squeezing many small operations such as his out of business.
The USDA formally announced its refusal to allow private testing on Friday, with USDA Undersecretary Bill Hawks saying, "The use of the test as proposed by Creekstone would have implied a consumer safety aspect that is not scientifically warranted."
While Creekstone officials said they were disappointed and are considering a legal challenge, they know the obstacles are great. The largest and most powerful meat-packing companies are dead set against Creekstone's proposal, as is the group that represents ranchers and feedlot owners, the National Cattlemen's Beef Association.
Association President Jan Lyons said that allowing one company to test all its cattle could quickly snowball into a situation where all companies would have to do similar testing. "If testing is allowed at Creekstone and other companies, we think it would become the international standard and the domestic standard, too," she said. "But it's a standard that's not based on science, would be very expensive and so is something our government definitely needs to resist."
The Creekstone packing plant does not look, smell or operate like a traditional slaughterhouse. It is an entirely contained building that, from the outside, looks as if it could be manufacturing computer chips or cooking apple pies, rather than slaughtering 1,000 cattle a day.
Its production line is intentionally slow to enhance worker safety and ensure that the animals are dead before butchering begins. In 2001, previous owners built state-of-the-art holding pens and walkways for cattle heading to slaughter, designed by animal welfare specialist Temple Grandin to keep the animals calm.
The average wage is between $11 and $12 an hour, and Arkansas City Manager Curtis Freeland said the company is about as good a corporate citizen as it could be. "The turnover rate at the plant is low, and they want to work with the community," he said. "This is not what people imagine when they think of a slaughterhouse."
One of the largest employers in southeastern Kansas, Creekstone provides jobs to 790 men and women in an area that has been reeling from the closing of several other large plants. But since December, the company has laid off 40 people and put the rest of its workforce on a three-day workweek.
Fielding went to Japan in February and came back convinced that Japanese consumers know their locally raised beef has been tested for BSE and would demand the same of American beef. By then, much of the American beef shipped to Japan had been replaced by meat from Australia, which has never detected mad cow disease in its herd and so does not require testing. The switch is especially galling to American meat producers such as Fielding, who worked hard over many years to expand the historically small Japanese beef market.
Creekstone filed its petition to start testing all animals in February, after Japanese buyers told Fielding they would resume business if the company agreed to follow Japan's testing rules. Japanese officials have supported Creekstone's petition, although Tadashi Sato at the Japanese Embassy in Washington said last week that trade could not be restored unless the USDA not only allowed the testing but also certified that it was being done properly.
In southeast Kansas, the issue is being closely watched. Kevin Gallaway, owner of Gallaway's steak restaurant in Winfield, a buyer of Creekstone beef, said the USDA should approve the testing:
"If our government keeps the company from testing the animals and it goes under as a result," he said, "I can tell you that people around here would be plenty angry about it."
Follow up article Gwinnett Daily Post, March 24, 2006 , 6A
Meatpacker sues for mad cow tests
Washington - A Kansas meatpacker sued the government on Thursday for refusing to let the company test for mad cow disease in every animal it slaughters.
Creekstone Farms Premium Beef says it has Japanese customers who want comprehensive testing. The Agriculture Department threatened criminal prosecution if Creekstone did the tests, according to the company's lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Washington. - from wire reports
That is ridiculous.
, but I have NEVER understood why the U.S. hasn't taken Japan's approach in testing every cow. Why, why, why would you ever want to take the chance of letting one of those cows in the food supply system. Unfortunately, I really think it has already (quietly) happened.
