U.S. loses meat labeling case; trade war looms

[cascadiance]

40. A big issue with this decision is U.S. and Canada policy on mad cow "diets" of cattle...

After the big issues with mad cow disease many years, the WHO issued guidelines for the global farming community that animal parts of cows should not be fed to cows OR other animals either such as poultry and pigs.

Most of the rest of the world has followed these guidelines, but the U.S. and Canada hadn't restricted feeding cattle animal parts to poultry and pigs, when their parts are fed back in feed to cattle, even though cattle parts are no longer fed to cattle now. Many experts have concerns that even though poultry and pigs don't get themselves the disease in terms of how it manifests itself in cattle, there is concern that they can be *carriers* of the disease, and that the circle of feeding cow parts to these animals and then these animals back to cattle will still perhaps perpetuate mad cow disease that will bite us back at a later date. Here's one of many articles on this topic from back then...

http://www.greens.org/s-r/33/33-09.html

And guess what, not too long ago, there was another case found in Canada with these reduced restrictions for another incidence of mad cow disease just this year! HMMM!!!!

http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/02/13/us-canada-beef-idUSKBN0LH15P20150213

So... If we can no longer have labels on country of origin of cattle meat, then what's to protect those around the world from perhaps a larger potential spread of mad cow disease that happened in Canada recently, likely due to these policies!

You would almost think that this newer policy will have the reverse effect, and make it less problematic for American cattle (at least those that don't have organic certification) to get sold overseas. I'm wondering what places like Europe and Asia with stricter standards feel about this. It certainly will likely hurt organic cattle farmers here in the U.S., who perhaps can no longer have a larger share of cattle exports than the more corporate cattle farmers that aren't putting in place adequate feed restrictions.