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Illegal Mad Cow Testing: Where are the Free Marketers?
This small item in the NYT deserves more attention. The Department of Agriculture banned a small meat packer from testing its cattle for Mad Cow disease. It seems that the problem is that the big meat packers don't want the expense of testing their cattle, but they also don't want this small meat packer of getting a competitive advantage from being able to certify that its beef as been tested and shown to be free of Mad Cow disease.
This is just a wonderful example showing that the Bush administration conservatives have no interest in the free market or "you are on your own" economics. They are prepared to use the heavy hand of the government to ensure that small meat packers do not win out over bigger more politically powerful meat packers. It is clear that the Bush administration is not prepared to tell the big meat packers that "you are on your own."
[Thanks to Ben Zipperer for the head up.]
--Dean Baker
COMMENTS (9)
This one is totally egregious.
I saw a 60 minutes piece on the fight the small meatpacker's were waging.
Government by the large corporations, for the large corporations.
Posted by: sunsetbeachguy | August 31, 2008 8:33 PM
Quite right. But some free marketers pounced on this four years ago
http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2004/04/its_a_mad_mad_m.html
Best
Alex Tabarrok
Posted by: Alex Tabarrok | August 31, 2008 8:52 PM
Yet free marketers keep voting for the party of corporate oligarchy. I would say that the corporate agri-business faction of the Democratic party is partly responsible for such laws which are both anti-consumer and anti-free market.
The sad thing is that when it is discovered that mad cow is present in U.S. cattle, it will be a disaster for the smaller players in the business as well as the investors in the big meat packers, but the current executives hope to be long gone with their bonuses at that point.
Posted by: Rick Kane | August 31, 2008 11:34 PM
Isn't this how the industrial agri-business has worked every since the invention of corn flakes.
US used to own sugar plantations in Cuba
when that was cutoff. High tariff was introduced which resulted in use of corn syrup. Now because of the use of corn syrup in every thing. US has 30% obesity problem.
I wonder how much US has lost just to punish Cuba.
Posted by: rd | August 31, 2008 11:52 PM
http://www.newscientist.com/channel/health/mg19926684.400-rabies-tragedy-follows-loss-of-indias-vultures.html
A drug given to cows killed off Indian Vultures which resulted in rabid dogs spreading rabies. Total cost more $40 billion.
This is how the system woks. blindly.
Medicine is produced without knowing consequences. Industrial Productivity is championed as long as capital makes money no matter what.
That is why to an Economist a forest has zero value until it is chopped up.
The whole economics system is based on 19th century newtonian physics with no resemblance to reality .
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=the-economist-has-no-clothes
Posted by: rd | September 1, 2008 12:08 AM
This is also closely connected to trade issues. A large part of the reason that beef producers here want to test for mad cow is that Korea and Japan require 100% testing for sale in their domestic markets. Creekstone has just been the most tenacious in trying to regain their export business (http://www.hpj.com/archives/2007/apr07/apr9/FederaljudgerulesCreekstone.cfm). So the Bush administration won't let exporters conform to standards that would allow them to access foreign markets. I've been following the Korea FT negotiations pretty closely and Bush has been trying to get Korea to take beef without much more testing, which was the proximate cause for the big protests there in June (http://www.boston.com/business/articles/2008/06/01/clashes_mark_south_korean_beef_protest/). Japanese and Korean customers have practically violent reactions to mad cow disease and the Bush Administration basically thinks that a) this is an illigitimate expression of consumer demands and b) American consumers might have the same reaction if they had more information. That doesn't seem to trust the free market to me.
Posted by: Tucker | September 1, 2008 10:33 AM
Actually Rick, this sort of thing is why this free marketer will no longer be voting republican. Now I'm just hoping the "new democrats" can hold enough influence in that party to induce me to vote with them.
Posted by: Erik L | September 2, 2008 8:47 AM
The big dairies are waging a similar war against small dairies that label their milk rBGH-free. It seems advertising that you meet a more stringent standard than the USDA's regulatory mandates is based on "unsound science," and therefore constitutes a libel for suggesting that milk which merely meets the standard is inferior.
Posted by: Kevin Carson | September 3, 2008 7:24 PM
The free market they fear most is that of ideas.
Posted by: js | September 6, 2008 2:03 AM