Trust is building and diminishing

UUGHHHH!  I really had a much better blog planned (in my head) than this.  However I must share this today as a beef producer.  As I opened Facebook yesterday on my phone to see the BSE report.  I suddenly got a feeling that someone punched me in the stomach.  For a beef farmer it is probably a similar feeling to a stock broker when a stock takes a major hit.  On that note cattle went down the limit yesterday.  I then immediately went to the prime sources for beef updates.  Lucky for me the Ohio Cattlemen's had this in my email inbox.  

  

The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced a positive test result on April 24, 2012, as part of its targeted surveillance program to test cattle for Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE). USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) has confirmed the nation's fourth case of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) in a dairy cow from central California. According to USDA, the carcass of the animal is being held under State authority at a rendering facility in California and will be destroyed. It was never presented for slaughter for human consumption, so at no time presented a risk to the food supply or human health.


There were several other pieces of information and you can read most of it here www.BSEInfo.org


I was immediately feeling better, what you are hearing is that this cow was never going to enter the food supply.  That is great!  Read on and I see that it was found by random checking.  My trust in our government is continually growing in the area of food security.  


It then dawned on me that I actually have more trust in our government that they will be able to keep our food safe and specifically catch BSE before it reaches humans, than them being able to keep political officials and government employees from sleeping with prostitutes and the American tax payers picking up the tab.