Howard Lyman speaks on Mad Cow

[Guest guest]

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" In 1990, when I first started talking about mad cow disease, I never

thought that the USDA would risk the entire cattle industry to protect the

profits of a few corporations. It seemed common sense that we had to quit

feeding slaughter house waste to grass-eating animals. It is crazy to

continue a practice that is unnatural, dangerous and which consumers find

abhorrent. Every country dealing with the mad cow issue has learned that

there are two things essential to restore consumer confidence. You have to

quit feeding animals to your food animals and you must institute a wide

spread program of testing. When mad cow disease destroyed the cattle

industry in England it also caused the fall of the Tory Government. It was

plain that lying to the consumers was a bad choice.

 

North America acted like we were not part of the world and we could

continue to deal with the pending disaster with press releases and loud

pronouncements.

 

In 2003 the bottom fell out for Canada when they confirmed their first

home-grown case of mad cow. They tried to assure a nervous importing

community that there was only one mad cow in their herd, but no one

believed them. Cattle prices dropped like a rock.

 

The United States treated our northern neighbor like an ugly step sister

and we banned their cattle and meat even though we were their biggest

customer. Millions of animals both live and dead, had crossed the border

in both directions, but we claimed that Canada had the problem and we were

as pure as the driven snow.

 

The US cattle industry jumped at the chance to take over the Canadian

export markets and we saw record prices for our cattle. We filled our

feedlots with the most expensive cattle in our history and continued to use

the same practices that caused mad cow in Canada. It is not hard to see we

were rushing down the same track as England and Canada and could expect to

suffer from the same train wreck.

 

On December 23rd the cow-that-spoiled-Christmas was reported to the world.

A Holstein dairy cow in the State of Washington proved what we professed

could never happen here - mad cow was in the US.

 

The USDA, FDA, National Cattlemen's Beef Association, and a host of shocked

meat flacks started to spew the preprogrammed party line that meat was safe

and this was the only mad cow in the United States. Within a matter of

hours our beef export market had disappeared. Country after country did to

us what we had done to Canada and other mad cow nations, they banned our

beef exports.

 

Cattle markets in the US disappeared and the future markets went limit down

without a single buyer. Containers of US meat on ships around the world

could not be landed at the dock and sold. The entire cattle industry was

changed over night because of the appearance of one mad cow.

 

The USDA has instituted some limited response to the disaster such as

banning the slaughter of downer animals from the human food system. This

was a response that was long overdue. A downer bill was defeated just

before Christmas in the House of Representatives by the Republican

leadership as a present to the big corporations who felt it was infringing

on their profit potential. When this action came to light after the mad

cow was discovered it was just too hot an issue and USDA banned downers

from the human food chain as a bone to satisfy unsettled consumers.

 

The solution to the problem of mad cow disease is fairly straightforward.

First quit feeding slaughter house waste to our food animals and second

test the slaughtered animals for the disease. Currrently, we have over 100

million head of cattle in the US and in the last thirteen years we have

only tested 57,000 animals for mad cow disease. France has 11 million

cattle in their herd and they test 66,000 each week. I believe in the US

we have had a " don't look, don't find " policy and up until the 23rd of

December, it worked.

 

If the cattle industry is to survive in the US we must start listening to

our customers both foreign and domestic. They are saying loud and clear

the product is not as safe as it should be and until it is, they do not

want to be called customers.

 

I'm a vegan and eat no animal products so for me there is no direct problem

but I have family and friends that continue to eat beef. Their future is a

great concern to me. I have many friends in the cattle business and I know

they are willing to correct the problem and they want to return to raising

animals as nature intended. I pray we solve this issue without filling the

graveyard with our friends and destroying the family farms and ranches that

helped build this nation. Treat this issue as if your life depended on it

because it just may. "

 

--- Howard Lyman, 01/10/04