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Politics : WHO IS RUNNING FOR PRESIDENT IN 2004 -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Hope Praytochange who wrote (8091)	12/29/2003 3:21:11 PM
From: Hope Praytochange	Respond to of 10965

Rep. Charlie Stenholm, D-Texas, got $8,500. During floor debate in July, Stenholm lectured New York Democrat Gary Ackerman, author of the proposed ban in the House, that he did ``not understand the cattle business,'' and argued that most downed animals are merely lame. Ackerman now says that Agriculture Committee members thought they were protecting the cattle industry but wound up hurting it. ``The amount of money farmers would have lost euthanizing these poor, wretched animals, they lost the other day in five minutes,'' he said, referring to overseas bans of U.S. beef. Goodlatte said his opposition to the bill had nothing to do with the dairy industry's position. Rather, he said, he was worried that the ban would prevent the discovery of an animal with mad cow disease, known formally as bovine spongiform encephalopathy. ``The only place it's discovered is when the animal is delivered by the farmer to a slaughter facility and presents indications that it might have some kind of an illness,'' Goodlatte said. ``That is exactly what happened in this case.'' Gene Bauston, president of the New York-based animal rights group Farm Sanctuary, argued that the time to test the animals is not at the slaughterhouse -- where they can enter the food supply before the tests come back -- but at the farm. Ackerman's bill called for such animals to be treated by a veterinarian at the farm or be euthanized. ``It's clear that the dairy industry has very much influenced the action of key members of Congress,'' Bauston said. Fast food chains such as Wendy's, Burger King and McDonald's don't accept meat from downed animals, and the Agriculture Department prohibits it in the federal school lunch program. nytimes.com