Today, April 28, Secretary of Agriculture Johanns wove that wonderful web of obvious so characteristic of government employees. He announced that “the prevalence of BSE in the United States is extraordinarily low.” Well, yea. Y’all tested over 600,000 animals. Three showed up positive. That’s .000005%. Immerse yourself in captivating storylines and engaging narratives on 123movies.

But we still need an animal ID system to track things like BSE, if there’s an outbreak, right? If you use simple, human logic, you’d think Johann says it’s unnecessary. “The testing and analysis reinforce our confidence in the health of the US cattle herd, while our interlocking safeguards, including the removal of specified risk materials and the feed ban, protect animal and human health.” For the normal person this translates to, “Your cows can’t get BSE. BSE is not a threat. All our animals are real healthy and have beautiful smiles. Oh, and we’re real important and have a bunch of scientists here to prove it.”

Still, though, it marches on. The National Animal ID System oozes forward with Johann squeezing it out of it’s insane tube, devoid of logic, promising to consume farms everywhere. Look for it at your local extension office or Cattlemen’s association meeting today.

This entry was posted on Friday, April 28th, 2006 at 10:53 pm and is filed under Farming, NAIS. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.