06/12/2005. Mad Cow USA - The Cover-Up Begins to Unravel

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http://www.prwatch.org/node/3751

 

 

 

 

Mad Cow USA - The Cover-Up Begins to Unravel

Submitted by John Stauber on Sun, 06/12/2005 - 09:09.

Topics: science | politics | food safety | agriculture

 

The US government's elaborate cover-up of mad cow dangers in the

United States has begun to unravel. Twenty-four hours after our

successful protest (with Organic Consumers Association) of the US

Department of Agriculture's mad cow dog-and-pony show in St. Paul,

USDA Secretary Johanns was forced to admit that a cow tested last year

and declared safe in fact DID have mad cow disease, or at least has

tested positive on the definitive Western Blot test recently

administered by USDA and considered the 'gold standard' for BSE testing.

 

I've often charged that the USDA is hiding US cases of mad cow by

using the wrong testing procedures and by failing to conduct food

safety tests on millions of animals and this announcement proves it.

USDA finally used the correct test — the Western Blot test — on this

suspect animal and it has proven to be a case of mad cow disease.

 

Here at the Center for Media and Democracy we will continue to work

hard on this issue until the US goes beyond lip-service and does what

the EU countries and Japan have done: implement a science-based

food-safety testing program that tests millions of cattle a year. And,

the US must put in place a REAL " fire-wall feed ban " that would stop

the current feeding of billions of pounds of blood, meat, bone meal,

animal fat and poultry feces to cattle in the US. These on-going feed

practices amplify and spread mad cow disease.

 

The US news media has mostly failed to expose mad cow risks in the US.

Instead, as with so many other issues, the corporate media has become

an echo chamber for industry and government, confusing the public into

thinking that the correct steps have been taken. Today's New York

Times contains two relevant articles that I'll use to make my point.

 

The New York Times article on mad cow disease refers (without

mentioning names of us and other critics) to ongoing condemnation of

US policies, something that Sheldon Rampton and I began in 1997 with

our prescient book Mad Cow USA. Our book correctly predicted that mad

cow disease would appear here because rather than take the steps

necessary to stop it, government and industry were (and are) merely

misleading the media and the public with spin and deception. The New

York Times could and should run a front page expose' revealing the

gross failures of US animal feeding and testing policies and the

ongoing risks they pose to both the US food and blood supply. But

instead this New York Times article makes it sound like the USDA is

behaving responsibly rather than engaging in an ongoing cover-up.

 

The second New York Times article looks at lobbyist Rick Berman's PR

front groups. Rick Berman fuels his pro-industry activism with

millions of dollars from the food, booze and tobacco industries. His

major websites are Activist Cash and Consumer Freedom. The New York

Times used our SourceWatch website to research Berman and cites our

exclusive report on his funding sources.

 

Berman's front group has smeared and attacked us for years, as in this

December 2003 news release: " Reckless activists including John Stauber

are already using the USDA's mad-cow disease announcement as a hook to

create panic over America's food supply. Minutes after USDA Secretary

Ann Veneman's Tuesday news conference, Stauber declared on CNN: 'My

presumption is that mad cow disease is spread throughout North America

.... There are more cases. No doubt about it.' "

 

At least Berman quoted me correctly. Typically his information is

riddled with factual errors and out-of-context quotes but this time he

got it right.