Creating Cow Concerns Should Make Mad Consumers
U.S. consumers are known for their affection for food, so it’s a wonder most Americans are responding so calmly to reports of mad cow disease discovered in a single animal in Washington State. That’s good news, because clear thinking lends itself to better decision-making. What’s not surprising, however, are attempts by activists and special interest groups of all kinds to scare consumers into making irrational choices.
Washington, DC (PRWEB) March 7, 2004 -- U.S. consumers are known for their
affection for food, so it’s a wonder most Americans are responding so calmly to
reports of mad cow disease discovered in a single animal in Washington State.
That’s good news, because clear thinking lends itself to better decision-making.
What’s not surprising, however, are attempts by activists and special interest
groups of all kinds to scare consumers into making irrational
choices.
Ours is a safe, healthy and prosperous world, and we
appropriately put a lot of effort into stamping out threats to our health and
well being. Unfortunately, we’re sometimes misled by groups that create and
perpetuate groundless health scares to make a living: ambulance-chasing trial
lawyers, anti-technology organizations, and some holistic food companies selling
solutions to problems that don’t exist. All these groups have seized on mad cow
disease (called Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy or BSE) as their next
opportunity to make a buck.
The typical formula these activists employ is
to trump up some bogus health claim, scare consumers into demanding new
government rules, and rake in cash by taking advantage of the hysteria they
caused. In this case, radical groups like People for the Ethical Treatment of
Animals hope to scare consumers away from meat and promote their vegetarian
agenda. Next are a few unscrupulous organic food advocates, such as the Organic
Consumers Association, who want to create a bigger niche for their products by
vilifying the conventional food industry. And a number of trial lawyers have
recently been seen trolling for business among people who are “concerned about
contracting” the disease. Their motto: Afraid you might get sick? Call a
lawyer.
What these groups haven’t counted on is that the truth is
actually being heard and, so far, Americans are responding appropriately.
Although, in the 19 years since BSE was discovered, more than 150 people in
Europe and the UK have been diagnosed with the human form of the disease after
eating beef products contaminated with central nervous system tissue from
infected cattle, not a single person has ever gotten it from eating meat in the
United States. Eating organic isn’t necessarily safer either. In England, the
epicenter of the mad cow problem, BSE was found in both conventional and organic
herds, so organic marketing claims linked to food safety and health are
irresponsible and mislead consumers and farmers alike.
The only known way
to prevent the spread of mad cow is by following certain basic animal feeding
practices, which are already enforced by US regulations and are standard
operating procedure among North American cattle ranchers. Additional rules
issued since the discovery of that one sick cow in Washington make the safest
system in the world even safer.
Look closely at this story, and you won’t
find any good reasons for the kind of radical changes in regulatory policy the
activists are demanding. What you will find is evidence that more regulation is
not necessarily better. Imposing rules that have no basis in science just to
make us feel better would, however, be highly costly for consumers and producers
– raising food prices, limiting the availability of certain foods, and straining
wallets across the country.
European countries failed to take the early
and aggressive preventive steps the United States began putting in place in
1989. As a result, no one, least of all European officials, should have been
surprised when a BSE epidemic hit. However, Europe’s hysterical response to the
outbreak of mad cow cost taxpayers billions of dollars and resulted in the
virtual collapse of the British beef industry. But the real loss was far more
than money.
Because regulators abandoned common sense, consumers lost
confidence in the government’s ability to protect the food chain, and European
producers lost the ability to make science-based decisions. Authority to protect
the European food supply was taken from qualified doctors and scientists and put
in the hands of politicians who set rules on the basis of opinion polls and
activist group press releases. It would be a tragic mistake if we were to allow
that to happen here.
American consumers enjoy the safest food supply in
the world because we understand how science, technology and competitive
regulation can be used to improve our health and well being. Before capitulating
to broad new regulations that could actually make use worse off, not better,
we’d all be wise to ask, “Where’s the beef?”
-- Gregory Conko is a Senior
Fellow and Director of Food Safety Policy with the Competitive Enterprise
Institute, a Washington, DC-based public interest group, where he specializes in
issues of food and pharmaceutical drug safety regulation, and on the general
treatment of health risks in public policy.
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Source : http://www.prweb.com/releases/2004/3/prweb109471.htm