The mammoths of the meatpacking industry apparently don't need to bloody their own knuckles with a beat-down of consumer expectations when the government is ready, willing and able to handle the dirty work.

Kansas-based Creekstone Farms Premium Beef had built a lab with the intent of testing all of its cattle for mad cow disease. While this would seemingly provide assurance for the consumer, the notion gives larger meatpacking companies agita. Such a move could provide a competitive foothold for mid-sized competitors like Creekstone, potentially winning the hearts and minds of consumers.

An appeals court panel in Washington ruled 2-1 Friday the U.S. Agriculture Department can keep beef producers from testing all their cattle for mad cow disease.

Many countries began banning the importation of U.S. beef in December 2003 because one cow in Washington state had been diagnosed with the disease.

A Kansas beef producer, Creek Farms Premium Beef, which raises Black Angus, wanted to test each of the 300,000 cattle it slaughters each year to combat the import bans. But the Department of Agriculture used a federal law to prevent Creek Farms from buying or using a mad cow disease testing kit.

Take a moment to digest this. The white house actually went to court to mandate that a meatpacking company who wants to test 100% of their cattle for mad cow disease can only test 1%.

The government's appeal was in response to a March 29, 2007 decision by Judge James Robertson of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia in Creekstone Farms Premium Beef, LLC v. U.S. Dept. of Agriculture, et al., Civil Action No. 06-0544 (pdf). Why would the White House have an interest in this matter? Vince Bieser connects the dots.

Beef producers can be notoriously intolerant of "activists with agendas" - as Howard Lyman learned. Lyman, a 65-year-old former rancher turned vegan activist, appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show in 1996 and predicted that mad cow disease would eventually break out in the U.S., thanks to the cattle industry's practice of feeding potentially infected rendered cow parts back to other cows. An appalled Oprah promised she would never eat another hamburger. That prompted a group of Texas cattlemen to sue her and Lyman under a state law making it illegal to criticize food products without a basis in "reliable scientific inquiry." Texas is one of 13 states that has passed similar "food libel" laws since the early 1990s - constitutionally questionable statutes that meat interests helped push.

"These laws are meant to stifle dissent," says Lyman, who won his case after years of litigation. "These people have a lot of money invested in controlling the media."

[...]

The meat business spends lavishly to support its political agenda. Since 1990, livestock and meat-processing interests have doled out almost $28 million to federal candidates, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, which tracks campaign contributions. The industry spends about another $2 million every year on lobbyists. "They understand we have the best laws money can buy," says Lyman. "It's much easier to buy a politician than to comply with regulations."

[...]

Big beef has a special friend in President George W. Bush. After all, Bush is the former governor of Texas, the nation's top cattle-producing state, and owns a ranch himself there. He was the keynote speaker at the NCBA's annual meeting in 2002. He was also the number-one recipient of the industry's campaign contributions in this (2004) and the last (2000) election cycle, pulling in nearly $1 million from livestock and meatpacking interests. Perhaps that helps explain why Bush solemnly told a mad cow-spooked public on New Year's Day: "I ate beef today, and will continue to eat beef."

This is probably not the end of the road for this case though.

The appeals court remanded to the U.S. District Court to resolve whether the USDA's refusal to let Creekstone test its cattle is arbitrary and capricious.

Further Reading:

• Cruelty Video Prompts Recall of 143 Million Pounds of Beef
• White House Tries to Force Less Mad Cow Testing