Tuesday, December 30, 2003
Uncommon Sense
The Bush Administration had an attack of common sense today on two fronts. Coming from this crowd, that's a record. First, John Ashcroft recused himself from the investigation into the outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame last fall. Plame, you will recalll, is the wife of ex-diplomat Joseph Wilson, who believes his wife's CIA cover was blown to punish him for accusing Bush of using bogus evidence to push his case for war against Iraq. Nobody's sure why Ashcroft did it today, long after the case has ceased to matter to very many people, but he did the right thing, which he cannot generally be counted on to do.
Second, and perhaps more important, the USDA has ordered that so-called "downer" animals--those unable to walk to the slaughter--no longer be used for human food. This common-sense regulation was passed by both houses of Congress at various times in the last two years, but was always dropped from final farm bills due to pressure from ag industry groups. Also banned--the use of "meat recovery systems" used to get bits of meat from the spinal cords of animals. (The existence of such systems was one of the more grotesque revelations of Eric Schlosser's best-selling Fast Food Nation a couple of years back.) It shouldn't have taken the appearance of mad cow disease in the U.S. for these regulations to finally pass. Such is the power of public outcry, however--it can even overpower the best intentions of industry lobbyists. We ought to remember that.
I was spending Christmas with the family when the mad cow story broke. My father and brother are small-scale beef producers, and their take is that most of the reporting of the story is more hysterical than factual, and thus the "crisis," while serious, is badly overblown. In their view, most people don't understand where beef comes from and how it is processed, so it's a short leap from hearing about one diseased cow 2,000 miles away to deciding never again to eat beef. For the last week, beef prices have been going down like Shaquille O'Neal falling through a skylight--and the people it hurts the worst first are not McDonalds and Wendys, not the giant meatpackers, but the smallest producers. Guys unlucky enough to be unable to afford lobbyists.
The Bush Administration had an attack of common sense today on two fronts. Coming from this crowd, that's a record. First, John Ashcroft recused himself from the investigation into the outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame last fall. Plame, you will recalll, is the wife of ex-diplomat Joseph Wilson, who believes his wife's CIA cover was blown to punish him for accusing Bush of using bogus evidence to push his case for war against Iraq. Nobody's sure why Ashcroft did it today, long after the case has ceased to matter to very many people, but he did the right thing, which he cannot generally be counted on to do.
Second, and perhaps more important, the USDA has ordered that so-called "downer" animals--those unable to walk to the slaughter--no longer be used for human food. This common-sense regulation was passed by both houses of Congress at various times in the last two years, but was always dropped from final farm bills due to pressure from ag industry groups. Also banned--the use of "meat recovery systems" used to get bits of meat from the spinal cords of animals. (The existence of such systems was one of the more grotesque revelations of Eric Schlosser's best-selling Fast Food Nation a couple of years back.) It shouldn't have taken the appearance of mad cow disease in the U.S. for these regulations to finally pass. Such is the power of public outcry, however--it can even overpower the best intentions of industry lobbyists. We ought to remember that.
I was spending Christmas with the family when the mad cow story broke. My father and brother are small-scale beef producers, and their take is that most of the reporting of the story is more hysterical than factual, and thus the "crisis," while serious, is badly overblown. In their view, most people don't understand where beef comes from and how it is processed, so it's a short leap from hearing about one diseased cow 2,000 miles away to deciding never again to eat beef. For the last week, beef prices have been going down like Shaquille O'Neal falling through a skylight--and the people it hurts the worst first are not McDonalds and Wendys, not the giant meatpackers, but the smallest producers. Guys unlucky enough to be unable to afford lobbyists.
