Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Johannes Pilch who wrote (515551)	12/24/2003 2:49:09 PM
From: DuckTapeSunroof	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769670

"Ultimately the cost of food would fly through the roof and we'd be right where we are now." >>> Maybe not. The UK has perhaps the world's most extensive inspection program now (and the most common-sense rules about keeping dead animals from being recycled into the human food chain)... yet, their cost to produce food has not soared. They are still highly competitive. >>> Certainly, the costs to their farmers from the inspection procedures are NOTHING like what they bore when the BSE outbreak was confirmed. "The problem is essentially a moral one. That genie is out of the bag and there is no real solution to the problem short of taking a direct role in supervising what enters your home and body. Even that is no guarantee, but it is certainly more effective than giving wholesale trust to others. It is also much more satisfying." >>> Unless you can grow your own food (hardly a choice for urban dwellers... unless they like Tilapia), then the government has to be relied upon to 'promote the general welfare' of it's citizens and defend our economic security from such forseeable threats. Otherwise, what use is a government? "To make the thing real nice, someone ought to come up with quick, easy and cheap test kits so that we might test the food we intend to eat." >>> They've been working on that for a long time: problem is the sub-virus-sized misshapen proteins called "prions" tend to concentrate in nerve tissue... not too many people willing to have their brains sampled to see if they've contracted vCD ;) >>> And, as we can see from the recent news items, even when a 'downer cow' is dragged into the slaughter house --- surely a prime candidate for testing --- the brains & spinal cord are sent for testing... while the MEAT is processed for sale anyway.