NY Times, January 5, 2004 Mad Cow Forces Beef Industry to Change Course By MICHAEL MOSS, RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr. and SIMON ROMERO
Jeffrey Behling, a dairy farmer in Washington State, used to burn the carcasses of his hobbled "downer" cattle until he found there was a market for their meat. Even so, selling damaged cows for human consumption never sat well with Mr. Behling, who in 2001 briefly had in his feedlot the Holstein cow identified last month as the downer with mad cow disease.
"It's an absurd practice," Mr. Behling, 44, said in an interview. "Foolishness caused by maybe a certain amount of greed."
The financial motive that drove the industry to defend practices like selling downers has been turned on its head by the discovery of mad cow disease. Now, in an attempt to rescue the market for American beef, the industry is being forced to accept regulation it has long fought.
But some large American companies that process and sell beef had already abandoned those more controversial practices, which had been a rallying point for food safety advocates since mad cow disease appeared overseas nearly two decades ago. While a schism developed in the industry, the current crisis reveals how government regulators sided with companies that adhered to those methods of operation.
When an animal rights group, Farm Sanctuary, and an individual, Michael Baur, sued the government to force a ban on using downer animals for food, government lawyers persuaded a federal judge to dismiss the case on the ground that mad cow disease, or bovine spongiform encephalopathy, had not appeared in the United States.
"The threat of B.S.E. from downed livestock is not `real and immediate,' " the lawyers argued. "B.S.E. has never been found in the country's livestock, and there is no reasoned basis to expect that it ever will be considering the measures being taken against it." An appeals court reinstated the case on Dec. 16, 2003 — one week before the announcement that the disease had been discovered.
For years, the industry had a simple strategy: Fight proposals that would crimp its ability to squeeze as much revenue as possible from each cow. The finances were compelling.
full: http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/05/national/nationalspecial2/05COW.html
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