Bush's Ag Department Hates America

[The Bush Administration’s Agricultural Department’s] lackadaisical, laissez-fair approach to their job recently led to the largest beef recall in history, a third of which had already been shipped to such nutrition programs as school lunch. Well, you might think, at least the ag officials caught the perpetrators.

Wrong. It was the Humane Society that blew the whistle on a California slaughterhouse that was abusing cattle and putting sick cows called “downers” into America’s food supply. Downers are so sick they can’t stand up – a sign of illness that's even associated with Mad Cow disease. These lame, unhealthy cows had been banned from use as human food… until last year, when industry officials very quietly slipped a loophole into the ban, thus allowing beef processing corporations to slaughter downers and sell the meat to our families.

True to their corporate servility and ideological nuttiness, Bush ag officials stood with the industry, rather than the public, reaffirming their support for the downer loophole. Then they even chastised the Humane Society for going outside of official channels to inform the public.

  Jim Hightower