CREEKSTONE FARMS’ BEEF WITH THE USDA (scroll about 80% of the way down from the top of the page) tells the story of a Kansas beef farmer whose access to the lucrative Japanese beef market was cut off when Japan banned US beef until every animal was tested for mad cow disease (this all part of the tit for tat of protectionism). Rather than wait for USDA testing that was delayed indefinitely by political roadblocks, the farmer decided to test their own cows, at their own expense.
- They built a $500,000 testing facility and were set to begin running cows through… when the USDA suddenly shut them down.
- The reason? The USDA claimed, according to the New York Times, that Creekstone’s private testing program could “confuse American consumers into thinking that untested beef was not safe.” The agency also said that comprehensive testing might inspire a false sense of security, given that tests aren’t guaranteed to detect BSE; and that Creekstone’s testing was largely unnecessary because most of the company’s cattle are younger than 30 months, an age group generally at low BSE risk.
To begin, these reasons are rather confused and contradictory. Moreover they are probably not the real reason for the ban:
But in an article earlier this year, the Denver Post suggested the USDA’s block of Creekstone’s testing had nothing to do with the public good but that the agency simply bowed to the wishes of its biggest lobby group, the National Cattleman’s Beef Association. The Association represents big meat packing firms, who, in the words of Rocky Mountain Farmers Union president John Stencel, “don’t want testing,” because it might set an expensive precedent. As the Association’s president himself told the Washington Post, “If testing is allowed at Creekstone… we think it would become the international standard and the domestic standard, too.”
The remainder of the piece presents arguments in favor of market-driven quality certification based on how much consumers are willing to pay for a given level of assurance.
