The USDA and the Bush Administration has resisted allowing cattle producers to have their animals tested and certified free from BSE. This heavy-handed resistance is unfair and allows the ban on U.S. beef imports by dozens of nations to punish our cattle producers and associated industries. U.S. beef products, some of the finest and most profitable in the world, are subject to an unnecessary and inexplicable government restriction which limits competition and hinders trade.

The Discovery

In December of 2003, a confirmed case of BSE (bovine spongiform encephalopathy, "Mad Cow") in the United States was announced. The condition was found in a single Holstein cow in Washington state.

Given the massive and horrific outbreak in Britain, the immediate response of the United States government (USDA and FDA) was to announce bans to prevent certain nervous system and other cattle tissues from entering the human food supply and animal feed. The FDA site on BSE.

The Current Situation

After the announced "outbreak", South Korea and Japan placed bans, which continue to this day, on the importation of U.S. beef. The market for American beef in these two countries alone is estimated at nearly $1.5 billion.

The additional loss from bans placed by other countries amounts to several hundred million dollars. The National Cattlemen's Beef Association, an industry trade-group, estimated the market for exported U.S. beef to be $3.86 billion at the end of 2003.

Testing Disallowed

The enterprising folks at Creekstone Farms Premium Beef, a Kansas-based beef producer, have sought to have all of their cattle tested privately which would allow them to begin selling beef to Japan. The USDA lacks the resources to test even a small percentage of the 35 million cattle slaughtered annually in the United States. This proposal was rejected by the USDA. Creekstone was willing to pay for the testing for export cattle and expects to accomplish it substantially cheaper than government estimates indicate.

In April 2004, Creekstone submitted this blistering response to the USDA.

The Result

Creekstone claims losses of $200,000 per day due to the government's resistance to the private testing.

Creekstone announced the layoff of 150 workers shortly before Christmas. This is in addition to 50 it laid off previously.

"What we predicted has happened - that is, we are not able to ship because we are not testing. We are not doing what the customer wants. We continue to think that is wrong," said Bill Fielding, Creekstone's chief operating officer.

The actions of the USDA in this matter are directly to blame for the loss of 200 jobs, millions of dollars in economic damage, and the ensuing tax revenues lost on those sales .

The mailing address for the USDA:

U.S. Department of Agriculture
1400 Independence Ave., S.W.
Washington, DC 20250.

The WaPo tells how it's been good to be located near Dulles Airport.

Pejman Yousefzadeh comments on Clarence Thomas and natural law.

I've had a rather light stretch of posting during the past few days (and my traffic stats show it!). I'll lay the blame on the holidays approaching, as well as my intent to complete some projects at work before year-end. We got the Christmas tree yesterday and decorated it tonight with the kids. She's a beauty, a Blue Spruce, cut from a tree farm in Loudoun County.

Frontpage has an introductory article on Leo Strauss and the roots of conservative thought.

The key Straussian concept is the Straussian text, which is a piece of philosophical writing that is deliberately written so that the average reader will understand it as saying one ("exoteric") thing but the special few for whom it is intended will grasp its real ("esoteric") meaning. The reason for this is that philosophy is dangerous. Philosophy calls into question the conventional morality upon which civil order in society depends; it also reveals ugly truths that weaken men's attachment to their societies. Ideally, it then offers an alternative based on reason, but understanding the reasoning is difficult and many people who read it will only understand the "calling into question" part and not the latter part that reconstructs ethics.

Worse, it is unclear whether philosophy really can construct a rational basis for ethics. Therefore philosophy has a tendency to promote nihilism in mediocre minds, and they must be prevented from being exposed to it. The civil authorities are frequently aware of this, and therefore they persecute and seek to silence philosophers.

It's a dense read (I added the break in the quote above), but you really should read it if you care about learning the underpinnings of conservative thought. I took Locke's suggestion for the Bloom book as an excuse to buy some more stuff from Amazon...