Song in my head: You can't hide your lying eyes.........................The Eagles


Tomorrow is a big day for a couple of people in my life. First, my son Cody is headed out of Portland Airport to Maryland to attend a senior prom with a special old friend. And, my girlfriend (susia) Kaci is having gastric bypass surgery. Here's to safe skies and hopes that the surgeon doesnt forget the scissors.


I Feel A Draft

I dont know about you, but I didn't raise a couple of boys so they could be drafted by our government, be sent to a useless war and maimed or killed. So, when I read posts like this (via Democratic Veteran), it evokes some passion in me.

Fortunately, my children were raised by a concientious objector and a pacifist (moi). Their father received CO status during the Vietnam Era and was raised intentionally by his father to aspire to Quaker theology. For example, they were forbidden to participate in any extra curricular activity that involved wearing a uniform, (ie sports, Cub Scouts) My kid's father and his brother went to a Quaker high school. These activities provided concrete evidence of one's strong anti-war stance.
(Update: Purchase a Bush 2004-Draft 2005 t-shirt here.)

MAD COW UPDATES

Via FSNet listserv:

USDA: Creekstone offered compromise in BSE testing dispute

April 19, 2004
Meatingplace.com
Daniel Yovich
Before the agency rejected Creekstone Farms request to voluntarily test all the cattle is slaughters for BSE, the Agriculture Department offered the Arkansas City, Kan.-based processor a compromise that would allow have allowed packers to request the agency to test an unspecified number of cattle over 30 months of age.
"We actually offered them the option to test some of their over-30-month-of-age animals even to deal with their farms where these animals are coming from to look at the progeny off of those farms,"
Undersecretary Bill Hawks said in a Friday news conference. "So we have given Creekstone?an option to deal with."
A transcript of Friday's news conference notes that USDA would have conducted the testing and Hawks said the proposal would not allow a private packer to conduct its own testing.
Creekstone dismissed USDA's counterproposal, COO Bill Fielding said, because less than 1 percent of the cattle the company processes are older than 30 months and because it would have "done nothing" to satisfy Creekstone's Japanese customers, who, like their government, are requiring that any U.S. beef imported to that country be completely tested for the brain wasting disease.
Ron DeHaven, the APHIS administrator and the agency's former chief veterinarian, said USDA felt the offer "was a good compromise because it also fits in very nicely with our surveillance program" because the proposal calls for testing animals that would normally be targeted as part of USDA's expanded surveillance program.
"And to the extent that there is value added for surveillance purposes and also?some certification program for [Creekstone], then that makes sense," DeHaven said. "It was an effort to do some of the marketing tools. This is exactly what we're talking about -- a marketing tool, just like they are saying that they wanted to do 100 percent testing for marketing tool. This was a marketing tool that they could have used or anybody else could use."
Hawks said it would take the agency several weeks to formalize this plan should any other packer show interest in using it

The compromise would have allowed further testing in older animals. Big whoop. And this statement is chilling.

Undersecretary Bill Hawks said in a Friday news conference. "So we have given Creekstone?an option to deal with."
A transcript of Friday's news conference notes that USDA would have conducted the testing and Hawks said the proposal would not allow a private packer to conduct its own testing.

Government run experiments? Private companies can't test their animals privately? Warning, Warning!!

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is still ironing out the details for new mad cow regulations. Under issue: should animal blood and poultry litter be used in the making of cattle feed and should poultry and swine feed contain spinal cord remnants from older (possibly BSE infected) cows.

FDA may significantly widen mad cow proposal

Stephen Sundlof, director of the Food and Drug Administration's Center for Veterinary Medicine was cited as saying on Monday that FDA's proposed regulations to prevent mad cow disease in the U.S. food and animal feed supply could be widened significantly from what was initially announced three months ago, adding that the agency was "getting fairly close" to publishing the proposed rules in the Federal Register.
Sundlof was further cited as saying that the FDA was considering expanding its initial announcement and widening the materials banned from poultry and swine feed to include brains, spinal cord and other central nervous system tissue from cattle aged 30 months and older.
The FDA said on Jan. 26 it would ban animal blood and poultry litter in cattle feed and ensure that certain cattle parts are not used in making dietary supplements and cosmetics.
. |link|

And while burger eaters wait, cattle blood is still added to cattle feed.

Cantwell Pushes Bush on Mad Cow Rules

The rules would also ban feed production facilities from using the same equipment to process both ruminant and non-ruminant feed, which can leave the door open to cross-contamination, Cantwell said at a news conference.

Yikes, whether we legislate decent food for cattle won't matter if there are no regulations regarding the sanitation of the equipment processing the feed. I wouldnt expect a cattle feed operation to sanitize their mixers 100% between batches. I worked in a spice and blending company for a couple of years, in a QA job, and I was lucky if I could break production to get a weekly cleaning.