Downer ban made "mountain out of a molehill"

The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) ban on the slaughter of so-called "downer" cattle garnered major publicity, like it was a huge step foreward for American beef, saving the consuming public from all manner of filth and disease.

Now the truth emerges: fewer than 1,000 head of the 34 million head slaughtered last year, were killed under the non-ambulatory regulations. The old rule was that non-ambulatory cattle, that became that way after they arrived at the packing house, could be re-inspected and slaughtered if no disease was found. Now no non-ambulatory cattle can be slaughtered for human consumption.

As a fig leaf to try and buy cheap grace, the new rule is great window dressing. In terms of actual achievement in improving public health, there isn't any. No unhealthy cattle were slaughterd before, because they were inspected individually by USDA inspectors before they were allowed through the slaughter line.

This is just one more example of how radical, vegetarian, animal rights groups like HSUS and PETA (People Eating Tasty Animals) can forment all kinds of press coverage and phony scares, only to have very little actual results, since their sensationalist charges were overblown to start with.

The downer cattle flap came from highly questionable video HSUS staged at a California packing plant. They got non-English speaking packing house workers to demonstrate pushing non-ambulatory cattle into the slaughter line, when probably the hapless foreign workers HSUS was taking advantage of, didn't even know what they were doing.

(HSUS, which stands for the Humane Society of the United States, is playing on a similar name to the very respected, non-controversial mainstream group American Humane Society).

Tragically, the liberal press and many innocent, well-intentioned people fall for the radical group's publicity stunts. They never take the time to find out the truth.