Creekstone Farms is suing the U.S. Department of Agriculture for refusing to allow the Arkansas City processor to test all its beef for mad cow disease. Creekstone wants to exceed federal and industry testing practices to ease the fears of skittish foreign customers such as the Japanese.
The issue is not whether blanket testing is necessary to ensure safety — everyone, including Creekstone, agrees it’s not — but whether a company should be able to go above and beyond federal guidelines to meet the needs of its customers.
Why shouldn’t it be able to do that?
Posted by Randy Scholfield
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23 Comments
Yes, it should. The problem here is that the USDA’s inspection function is now corrupted by big Ag.
Strong financial incentives exist for big Ag to kill any attempt by independent beeve packers to guarantee superior quality IF that guarantee is the result of extra-USDA testing.
It’s a version of kfg’s crab bucket all over again, only on a national scale. Big Ag knows that any success Creekstone has through increased inspection puts pressure on big Ag to do the same. The problem for big Ag is that Creekstone can charge a premium that will cover the inspection cost, plus, but big Ag cannot. Big Ag’s beef is more of a commodity good than is the beef of Creekstone.
Big Ag is determined to prove that voluntary inspection is superior to that of mandated inspection (because they believe mandated inpection is unnecessarily costly, plus they just don’t like it) even if it kills their golden goose.
Which it probably will, sooner or later, given human behavior and the incentives to cheat on voluntary inspection.
Damn right, it should.
And the fact that it can’t UNDER LAW is more proof–as if we needed it–that the ag market is dominated by major players that set policies for their own benefit, not the farmers and especially not for consumers.
Those of you that love free enterprise so much–here’s a clear example of “free enterprise” leading to concentration of power and an UNFREE market.
That’s why we need a big gov’t to keep free markets free and fair with anti-trust laws etc.
Consumers want it but they can’t get it. Tell me how that’s “capitalism” again?
Not only should Creekstone be able to do this, they should get special dispensation for doing so.
Packers who DO NOT inspect all their beef should be forced to say so with large warning stickers on their beef.
THIS PRODUCT NOT INSPECTED FOR PRESENCE OF MAD COW DISEASE CAUSING AGENTS
something like the dolphin safe tuna thing only in reverse.
A company that WANTS to do the right thing should not have to SUE to do so.
This crap has been going on for almost thirty years. Creekstone’s product is a premium niche product. Big ag hates that, just like locally grown organic veggies. They DOMINATE commodity ag, and they want all ag products to be commodities, not premium niche products.
When you have a product like Creekstone’s, it is called “identity preserved” and it has been an extremely effective marketing tool for OVER thirty years. Think “florida” oranges and “california” cheese. Segregated and identified from the commodity masses.
Consumers used to think oranges were oranges and apples were apples. But with the success of florida oranges and washington apples, other commodity producers started looking for ways to market “identity preserved” products. That means you can tell WHICH apples were grown in washington.
It’s been giving big commodity ag FITS since then. They do everything they can to squash it.
Harder to do with wheat, but we tried to do it out here in 1983 with hard red winter wheat and a company called Great Plains Red. Our wheat naturally has a higher protein content due to soils, climate, etc. The problem was segregating it and shipping it. It has taken 20 years for the technology to do so caught up with the market demand.
Cargill eventually built an elevator here because we were going to take away their high protein wheat that they got for commodity prices. We were taking it to a JAPANESE market.
They wanted our wheat, but only if we cleaned it first. They have ALWAYS demanded high quality food products. And they have always had the will and the dollars to pay for higher quality food. Big ag HATES that. They want japanese market share, but they wont do what the market wants.
The Creekstone thing is the latest and most aggregious example.
Big ag says: “By god, we are not gonna increase our quality if it increases costs. And we are gonna squash any entrepreneurial efforts that might GIVE the market what it wants.” They only want a free market when THEY say what constitutes free.
This food series episode brought to you courtesy of the free market supporters of big ag. How’s THAT workin’?
Big ag is so damn arrogant they think they can control the market like they have controlled USDA and the federal government.
But the market demands high quality niche foods. They can no longer control the demand by controlling the supply. Voodoo economics anyway.
If I had to sing to big ag, it wouldnt be John Prine. It would be Steve Winwood’s “Roll with it baby”. Why not follow the market instead of squashing it?
(teasing) OH MY GOODNESS!! I feel unclean! I’m agreeing with all the mad liberal posters! AAAARRRRGGGGHHHH!!!!!
Y’all have some really good points.
Does this mean I’m converting to the “dark” side? :)
I hope not Julie because it means I would be turning as well… LOLThe points are valid and it angers me that someone trying to go above and beyond is kept from doing so.. I hope they win.
Good points all – GO FOR IT CREEKSTONE!
One word: Ridiculous. In no way should Government stand in the way of private enterprise when it comes to varifying quality. Can you imagine the government going into an auto plant and forbiding them from quality testing more than 10% of the cars produced? Or the NEC going into an electronics firm and forbiding them from putting government approval tags on more than 10% of items produces?
There is something really wrong going on here, and it leads right back to congressmen and women being in the pockets of big business. If this doesnt wake people up to the need for changing the so-called guards, nothing will. But then again, there are a lot of people who sleep right through life without a conscience. Just look at Kansas politics.
Isn’t this about the point where Joe Williams comes in with some really twisted reason why it’s all the fault of the Leftist cigarette smoking, alcohol drinking, pot smoking liberals?
Talk about falling through the looking glass, A company tries to go the extra mile, and the law says they can’t? What country is this, anyway?
I am just amazed that no one has said Bush is the devil and it is all his fault yet…
Amen that XXX
I just thought Creekstone was trying to force the big packers to do the right thing for competetive reasons. I had NO IDEA that doing the right thing was actually illegal.
UNEFFINGBELIEVABLE!
If people saw what this disease can do……
Bush is the devil and it is all his fault.
There. Happy now?
I cant believe anyone hasnt said that clinton is the devil and it is al his fault.
BOOOGER!!!!
Bush does support the same monopolistic UN-market forces that give rise to these problems.
So, thanks for reminding us, Nathan . . . Bush IS the devil.
Speaking of which, looks like Caspar Wineberger is finding out just about now that there really is a hell . . .
Oh, well, shoulda thought of that before you invented and armed the Contras.
Sucks to be him . . .
XXX falling through the looking glass? heheh
Well, in ks, it does help to be able to believe in six impossible things before breakfast.
Republicans are supposed to be party of small government or so they say. They control all three branches of government yet here is a company hindered by stupid regulations by a republican led govermnent. BTW the dept of Ag. is an executive department controlled by the president. If he really cared about jobs or trade he could fix this with an executive order.
kfg,”I cant believe anyone hasnt said that clinton is the devil and it is al his fault.”
Actually, Clinton did it, and his wife took the credit:-)
Has anyone noticed here that the Bush administration is self-proclaiming to be “free market”, yet when Creekstone EXACTLY tries to be a free-marketer, developing a product for which there is a waiting consumerate, the executive branch tries to crush this free market initiative.
Big Ag isn’t worried about a $50 test per steer. The big worry is that what if testing showed that if .1%, or even .01% or even .001% of our cattle had mad cow disease. Even the last figure would translate into millions of Americans exposed. This would create liabilities that have never been seen.
Creekstone is doing the smart thing as a business that wants to succeed. Of course, this doesn’t mean that they will report to the public the percentage of prion-containing carcasses they find. That may be a fear in Big Ag’s minds too: what if some little technician leaks the information to the press? Suppose that Creekstone finds .01% of their carcasses to be contaminated. What does that imply for the rest of the industry?
There is already safe beef. You can get beef that has been grass-fed, with no chance of mad cow disease. This organic niche product doesn’t bother Big Ag. What worries Big Ag is the potential for its own product to be identified as deadly.
Use logic here. Suppose there are only 10 cows in America that harbor prions. So Creekstone does its testing, and finds 0% incidence of prions.Everybody is happy. Creekstone sells beef to Japan, and the rest of the beef stock is statistically assumable to be safe. So, in that circumstance, Big Ag has no objection to testing.
The only circumstance in which objection can plausible is if Big Ag fears that Creekstone is going to FIND prions, and if it, as a SMALL producer does–scientists call this statistical sampling–then the ramifications for the entire stock of American cattle are huge.
Let me restate this: I threw out $50 a cost, which is a hypothetical mass-testing cost. Actually, for millions of cattle, you could go to statistical sampling, for example one test for every 50 cows, which might reduce testing’s cost to $50 for every 50 cows. For small-scale testing of every cow,as Creekstone proposes it may cost more than $50 per cow.
If you were a Cargill, and you thought that mad cow disease is extremely rare, and that Creekstone is going to be throwing money away on testing, but is nevertheless satisfying the Japanese buyers, do you care if Creekstone runs tests? I don’t think so.
Indeed, once Creekstone has tested tens of thousands of cows and gotten totally negative results, if you’re Cargill you have gotten free research that proves your own product is safe. Then you can press for Japan’s market to open, thanks to Creekstone’s research that has cost you nothing, to prove that American beef is safe.
So, if Cargill is opposed to testing, it suggests, to an analyst, that Cargill isn’t confident that Creekstone will find a 0% prion-incidence, but rather that Cargill fears that Creekstone will find a measurable incidence of prions, which will have statistical relevance when applied to tens of millions of cows. I think this is what Big Ag is afraid of: not a negative result, but a positive result in Creekstone’s testing, which is actually a form of scientific research.
Suppose my theory is wrong. All that Cargill et al have to do is lobby for a law or regulation that forces Creekstone to give its testing data to the FDA or USDA. I don’t think Creekstone could mount a convincing argument against this. “You tested cows for your customers, what did you find?” If they find 0% prions, and Big Ag uses this to negotiate opening of the market to other producers, Creekstone still has a great product, and the Japanese will buy it, as well as Big Ag’s high-end (i.e. USDA prime beef) product.
Heartlander, good point, but I think it’s all about the money, the bottom line. We already know Big Ag doesn’t care about consumer safety. Look at what they’ve done to slaughterhouse inspection. If Creekstone tests all their beef, that will create a demand. Big Ag doesn’t want to have to pay to remain competitive, so they let their lackeys in Washington do their dirty work.
It’s all about the bottom line.
I find Hearlanders post chilling.
I had never stopped to think about the deniablilty that no or limited testing brings as to liability for the people who prepare our beef.
Any regular poster/reader knows my experience with prion caused disease.
I encorage all to look into this.
If you have seen the stock footage of a prion diseased cow……..staggering stumbling, falling, incoherent. Watch it again. If you have not seen this footage then do seek it out.
Then imagine it in a human being. And if you need the details of the suffering this can cause please email me and I will share it with you.
My father suffered, declined, and died from the human form of prion disease.
I’m something of an attack dog as to my usual posts. My dad taught me to be a fighter. Now my Dad has only me to address the thing that destroyed him.
I BEG any poster or reader of these threads whether they like what I post or not to research this and act. This is very important.
Find facts with the CJD Foundation.
I am so sorry to hear about your father.
I need to correct my absolutely inappropriate use of the “Cargill” name. I do not know if this company is opposing Creekstone’s testing plan, so it was flatly wrong for me to speak of “Cargill” per se. The fact is, my family eats a lot of Cargill products, including Excel beef, because we like them. Cargill also provides a lot of good jobs to Kansans.
We haven’t had a mass-outbreak of mad cow disease, as occurred in England, which is a good thing. Hopefully we never will.
If we don’t have a prion problem, then it just seems to me that nobody should mind Creekstone’s testing program, because its Japanese customers are asking for it. These customers want PIECE OF MIND. If Creekstone doesn’t test its beef, the Japanese will just continue to obtain beef from non-US sources.
America has a huge international trade imbalance. If we had thousands more American companies that had Creekstone’s vision of tailoring their products to overseas customers’ specifications, then we could reduce our trade imbalance.
One of America’s hallmark attributes has been ingenuity and pluck. Creekstone has them both. We need to encourage this entrepreneurial spirit. It’s really good for Kansas.
This is from the NYT. The Eagle has refused to run the story, and the editors have refused to give us a thread to discuss it.
-CF
*********************************
Bush Was Set on Path to War, British Memo Says
By DON VAN NATTA Jr.Published: March 27, 2006
LONDON — In the weeks before the United States-led invasion of Iraq, as the United States and Britain pressed for a second United Nations resolution condemning Iraq, President Bush’s public ultimatum to Saddam Hussein was blunt: Disarm or face war.
But behind closed doors, the president was certain that war was inevitable. During a private two-hour meeting in the Oval Office on Jan. 31, 2003, he made clear to Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain that he was determined to invade Iraq without the second resolution, or even if international arms inspectors failed to find unconventional weapons, said a confidential memo about the meeting written by Mr. Blair’s top foreign policy adviser and reviewed by The New York Times.
“Our diplomatic strategy had to be arranged around the military planning,” David Manning, Mr. Blair’s chief foreign policy adviser at the time, wrote in the memo that summarized the discussion between Mr. Bush, Mr. Blair and six of their top aides.”The start date for the military campaign was now penciled in for 10 March,” Mr. Manning wrote, paraphrasing the president. “This was when the bombing would begin.”The timetable came at an important diplomatic moment. Five days after the Bush-Blair meeting, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell was scheduled to appear before the United Nations to present the American evidence that Iraq posed a threat to world security by hiding unconventional weapons.
Although the United States and Britain aggressively sought a second United Nations resolution against Iraq — which they failed to obtain — the president said repeatedly that he did not believe he needed it for an invasion.
Stamped “extremely sensitive,” the five-page memorandum, which was circulated among a handful of Mr. Blair’s most senior aides, had not been made public. Several highlights were first published in January in the book “Lawless World,” which was written by a British lawyer and international law professor, Philippe Sands. In early February, Channel 4 in London first broadcast several excerpts from the memo.Since then, The New York Times has reviewed the five-page memo in its entirety. While the president’s sentiments about invading Iraq were known at the time, the previously unreported material offers an unfiltered view of two leaders on the brink of war, yet supremely confident.The memo indicates the two leaders envisioned a quick victory and a transition to a new Iraqi government that would be complicated, but manageable. Mr. Bush predicted that it was “unlikely there would be internecine warfare between the different religious and ethnic groups.” Mr. Blair agreed with that assessment.
The memo also shows that the president and the prime minister acknowledged that no unconventional weapons had been found inside Iraq. Faced with the possibility of not finding any before the planned invasion, Mr. Bush talked about several ways to provoke a confrontation, including a proposal to paint a United States surveillance plane in the colors of the United Nations in hopes of drawing fire, or assassinating Mr. Hussein.Those proposals were first reported last month in the British press, but the memo does not make clear whether they reflected Mr. Bush’s extemporaneous suggestions, or were elements of the government’s plan.
Consistent Remarks
Two senior British officials confirmed the authenticity of the memo, but declined to talk further about it, citing Britain’s Official Secrets Act, which made it illegal to divulge classified information. But one of them said, “In all of this discussion during the run-up to the Iraq war, it is obvious that viewing a snapshot at a certain point in time gives only a partial view of the decision-making process.”
On Sunday, Frederick Jones, the spokesman for the National Security Council, said the president’s public comments were consistent with his private remarks made to Mr. Blair. “While the use of force was a last option, we recognized that it might be necessary and were planning accordingly,” Mr. Jones said.
“The public record at the time, including numerous statements by the President, makes clear that the administration was continuing to pursue a diplomatic solution into 2003,” he said. “Saddam Hussein was given every opportunity to comply, but he chose continued defiance, even after being given one final opportunity to comply or face serious consequences. Our public and private comments are fully consistent.”
The January 2003 memo is the latest in a series of secret memos produced by top aides to Mr. Blair that summarize private discussions between the president and the prime minister. Another group of British memos, including the so-called Downing Street memo written in July 2002, showed that some senior British officials had been concerned that the United States was determined to invade Iraq, and that the “intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy” by the Bush administration to fit its desire to go to war.
The latest memo is striking in its characterization of frank, almost casual, conversation by Mr. Bush and Mr. Blair about the most serious subjects. At one point, the leaders swapped ideas for a postwar Iraqi government. “As for the future government of Iraq, people would find it very odd if we handed it over to another dictator,” the prime minister is quoted as saying.
“Bush agreed,” Mr. Manning wrote. This exchange, like most of the quotations in this article, have not been previously reported.Mr. Bush was accompanied at the meeting by Condoleezza Rice, who was then the national security adviser; Dan Fried, a senior aide to Ms. Rice; and Andrew H. Card Jr., the White House chief of staff. Along with Mr. Manning, Mr. Blair was joined by two other senior aides: Jonathan Powell, his chief of staff, and Matthew Rycroft, a foreign policy aide and the author of the Downing Street memo.
By late January 2003, United Nations inspectors had spent six weeks in Iraq hunting for weapons under the auspices of Security Council Resolution 1441, which authorized “serious consequences” if Iraq voluntarily failed to disarm. Led by Hans Blix, the inspectors had reported little cooperation from Mr. Hussein, and no success finding any unconventional weapons.At their meeting, Mr. Bush and Mr. Blair candidly expressed their doubts that chemical, biological or nuclear weapons would be found in Iraq in the coming weeks, the memo said. The president spoke as if an invasion was unavoidable. The two leaders discussed a timetable for the war, details of the military campaign and plans for the aftermath of the war.
Discussing Provocation
Without much elaboration, the memo also says the president raised three possible ways of provoking a confrontation. Since they were first reported last month, neither the White House nor the British government has discussed them.
“The U.S. was thinking of flying U2 reconnaissance aircraft with fighter cover over Iraq, painted in U.N. colours,” the memo says, attributing the idea to Mr. Bush. “If Saddam fired on them, he would be in breach.”It also described the president as saying, “The U.S. might be able to bring out a defector who could give a public presentation about Saddam’s W.M.D,” referring to weapons of mass destruction.A brief clause in the memo refers to a third possibility, mentioned by Mr. Bush, a proposal to assassinate Saddam Hussein. The memo does not indicate how Mr. Blair responded to the idea.Mr. Sands first reported the proposals in his book, although he did not use any direct quotations from the memo. He is a professor of international law at University College of London and the founding member of the Matrix law office in London, where the prime minister’s wife, Cherie Blair, is a partner.
Mr. Jones, the National Security Council spokesman, declined to discuss the proposals, saying, “We are not going to get into discussing private discussions of the two leaders.”At several points during the meeting between Mr. Bush and Mr. Blair, there was palpable tension over finding a legitimate legal trigger for going to war that would be acceptable to other nations, the memo said. The prime minister was quoted as saying it was essential for both countries to lobby for a second United Nations resolution against Iraq, because it would serve as “an insurance policy against the unexpected.”
The memo said Mr. Blair told Mr. Bush, “If anything went wrong with the military campaign, or if Saddam increased the stakes by burning the oil wells, killing children or fomenting internal divisions within Iraq, a second resolution would give us international cover, especially with the Arabs.”
Running Out of Time
Mr. Bush agreed that the two countries should attempt to get a second resolution, but he added that time was running out. “The U.S. would put its full weight behind efforts to get another resolution and would twist arms and even threaten,” Mr. Bush was paraphrased in the memo as saying.The document added, “But he had to say that if we ultimately failed, military action would follow anyway.”
The leaders agreed that three weeks remained to obtain a second United Nations Security Council resolution before military commanders would need to begin preparing for an invasion.Summarizing statements by the president, the memo says: “The air campaign would probably last four days, during which some 1,500 targets would be hit. Great care would be taken to avoid hitting innocent civilians. Bush thought the impact of the air onslaught would ensure the early collapse of Saddam’s regime. Given this military timetable, we needed to go for a second resolution as soon as possible. This probably meant after Blix’s next report to the Security Council in mid-February.”Mr. Blair was described as responding that both countries would make clear that a second resolution amounted to “Saddam’s final opportunity.” The memo described Mr. Blair as saying: “We had been very patient. Now we should be saying that the crisis must be resolved in weeks, not months.”It reported: “Bush agreed. He commented that he was not itching to go to war, but we could not allow Saddam to go on playing with us. At some point, probably when we had passed the second resolutions — assuming we did — we should warn Saddam that he had a week to leave. We should notify the media too. We would then have a clear field if Saddam refused to go.”
Mr. Bush devoted much of the meeting to outlining the military strategy. The president, the memo says, said the planned air campaign “would destroy Saddam’s command and control quickly.” It also said that he expected Iraq’s army to “fold very quickly.” He also is reported as telling the prime minister that the Republican Guard would be “decimated by the bombing.”Despite his optimism, Mr. Bush said he was aware that “there were uncertainties and risks,” the memo says, and it goes on, “As far as destroying the oil wells were concerned, the U.S. was well equipped to repair them quickly, although this would be easier in the south of Iraq than in the north.”
The two men briefly discussed plans for a post-Hussein Iraqi government. “The prime minister asked about aftermath planning,” the memo says. “Condi Rice said that a great deal of work was now in hand.
Referring to the DefenseDepartment, it said: “A planning cell in D.O.D. was looking at all aspects and would deploy to Iraq to direct operations as soon as the military action was over. Bush said that a great deal of detailed planning had been done on supplying the Iraqi people with food and medicine.”Planning for After the WarThe leaders then looked beyond the war, imagining the transition from Mr. Hussein’s rule to a new government. Immediately after the war, a military occupation would be put in place for an unknown period of time, the president was described as saying. He spoke of the “dilemma of managing the transition to the civil administration,” the memo says.The document concludes with Mr. Manning still holding out a last-minute hope of inspectors finding weapons in Iraq, or even Mr. Hussein voluntarily leaving Iraq. But Mr. Manning wrote that he was concerned this could not be accomplished by Mr. Bush’s timeline for war.
“This makes the timing very tight,” he wrote. “We therefore need to stay closely alongside Blix, do all we can to help the inspectors make a significant find, and work hard on the other members of the Security Council to accept the noncooperation case so that we can secure the minimum nine votes when we need them, probably the end of February.”At a White House news conference following the closed-door session, Mr. Bush and Mr. Blair said “the crisis” had to be resolved in a timely manner. “Saddam Hussein is not disarming,” the president told reporters. “He is a danger to the world. He must disarm. And that’s why I have constantly said — and the prime minister has constantly said — this issue will come to a head in a matter of weeks, not months.”
Despite intense lobbying by the United States and Britain, a second United Nations resolution was not obtained. The American-led military coalition invaded Iraq on March 19, 2003, nine days after the target date set by the president on that late January day at the White House.