| In
the wake of the U.S. Department of Agriculture's disclosure
last month that the first U.S.-born BSE-infected cow had
been found on a ranch in Texas, a California legislator
has introduced new legislation in the California State Senate
to permit ranchers to independently test their herd for
bovine spongiform encephelopathy in order to guarantee the
beef's safety to consumers.
“It
is time for agriculture to step into the 21st century and
realise they are part of the larger society,” Sen. Mike
Machado, a Democrat from the agricultural town of Linden,
Calif., told the Los Angeles Times. “We need to
do whatever we can to say that we have the best-quality
and safest food.”
In
addition to the Machado proposal, another California legislator,
Assemblyman Paul Koretz, a Democrat representing West Hollywood,
has re-introduced a country-of- origin labeling proposal
for meat sold in California. And this week, a recall disclosure
bill introduced by Sen. Jackie Speier, a Democrat representing
the affluent San Francisco Bay Area community of Hillsborough,
is set for a vote in an Assembly committee.
None
of these proposals is supported by mainstream agriculture
in California, which is the most agriculturally productive
state in the U.S. Responding to the Machado BSE testing
proposal, Ben Higgins, executive vice president of the California
Cattlemen's Association, said, “It unnecessarily sensationalizes
the disease, and it sends a message to consumers that [BSE]
is a legitimate food-safety threat in this country. We know
that it is not,” according to the Los Angeles Times.
John Harris, owner of Harris Ranch Beef Co., one of
the largest independent beef companies in the U.S. and based
in Selma, Calif., said all the legislative activity is “frustrating,
because the American beef supply is safe.” He said steps
such as traceback should be implemented on a national basis
rather than state-by-state.
Consumer
and labor organisations see the issue differently, however.
“USDA is putting a whole lot of effort into not looking
for BSE,” commented Elisa Odabashian of Consumers Union,
which supports the Machado testing proposal as well as the
COOL and recall-disclosure proposals.
According
to the Times, California Secretary of Agriculture
A.G. Kawamura declined to comment on any of the proposals.
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