My Mad Cow Test

The Bush White House has taken a lot of heat, among other things, for supporting and enforcing (and perhaps making) a decision to NOT ALLOW ranchers to test their cattle for mad cow disease. I was among the critics, but tonight, for some reason, I rethought my position. It took me a while, mostly because I was presented with lots of arguments against the decision and had to come up with my own in favor of it. On top of that, I'm naturally suspicious of the most evil White House administration of my life; they have a well-earned reputation for incompetence; and it seems like such a bad idea.

Why not allow ranchers to test their cattle? For starters, it's a free country. You shouldn't need a reason NOT to ban something; you should need a very good reason TO ban something. Especially if you're a Republican. Secondly, it only promotes public health and confidence in our beef. If there's nothing to fear, why ban the tests? Finally, it's hurting us economically! Some countries won't accept imports unless we increase our testing, and if the government won't do it, why not let ranchers do so for a profit? Why not let them be responsible businessmen and grow our nation's economy?

I think I've figured out the logic, the reason for the ban. It seems so un-American, so anti-business, so anti-public that it's hard to believe Americans support it, much less a staunchly conservative Republican administration. But then something Lord Henry told me recently helped me connect the dots. He said, cynically, that a true conservative believes that humans are inferior creatures. An idealistic liberal believes in the best of humanity, while the very conservative stewards seek to limit the damage we can cause by the worst within us. And then it hit me.

Our leaders don't want to stand in our way of being responsible, upstanding businessmen. But they do have a valid concern that ranchers are NOT responsible, competent scientists, publicists, or macroeconomic thinkers. And they'd have to be to be giving mad cow tests. Think what would happen with one false positive. Or even a "presumptive positive" (which means "maybe, it'll take a few days to know for sure"). What if one rancher screws up the test, or uses a cheap testing kit, or a testing kit actually fails (even with a low false positive rate, if everyone's testing, we'll wind up with a few)? Mass hysteria. Widespread panic. Beef pulled off the shelves. Suspicions of a coverup. An entire generation of ranchers lose their livelihood. Restaurants shut down all across America. McDonald's makes Morgan Stanley look like a bulwark of stability. A low probability event crushes the beef market, and we see an entire industry disappear in a way that would make even one of today's bankers go white. A national food crisis, fueling a global food crisis, has us thinking of the 2008 floods and inflation and shortages and credit crunch as the "good old days."

It's a policy that thwarts modest improvements to stave off, to quote Tim Curry as King Arthur, "a total bloody disaster."