This Space for Rent

Perhaps it’s time to switch over to a vegan diet?

The Bush administration said Tuesday it will fight to keep meatpackers from testing all their animals for mad cow disease.

(--the International Herald-Tribune)

And why will they do this? Because if some little meatpackers test all of their animals for mad cow disease, that means that the large evil party supporting meatpackers might lose market share unless they tested all of their animals for mad cow disease as well. And that would reduce their profits, which would be bad.

After all, it's all fine and good to make empassioned speeches about the glory of the free market™, but the free market has the great whopping flaw of not guaranteeing the flow of money into Evil Party coffers. So when it comes down to letting someone do tests on their own cattle, or put labels on their milk saying it comes from cattle that haven't had a BGH chaser on their regular diet of antibiotics and plastic-laced feedstock, well, you can't allow that. After all, what does it matter if hoi polloi get infested with rogue prions? They aren't rich, and they don't count.