Mad Cow

I'm convinced that it is getting harder and harder to tell stories in The Onion from real stories. The US has long maintained that there is no Mad Cow disease in the US. Critics had argued that the level of testing was far too low to actually detect it if it was present. Eventually the Agriculture department increased the testing rate - and lo and behold they discovered infected cows (you probably read about this in the press because other countries now banned US beef).

In the news just a few days ago was an announcement from the agriculture department that they would scale back testing for BSE (the technical name for mad cow disease) by 90%. NINETY PERCENT! I'm no expert but I'm guessing that they won't find as many of those pesky infected animals that cause export bans.

If you think this is bad then check this out. Individual farmers or companies who want to carry our further testing on their own animals at their own expense are prohibited from doing so by the Agriculture department because 'it could make consumers think that untested beef was not safe.'

As usual if you don't know much about Mad Cow disease, BSE, CJD etc then Wikipedia is a better place to start than a google search.