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About Oregon daily emerald. (Eugene, Or.) 1920-2012 | View Entire Issue (Jan. 7, 2004)
Newsroom: (541) 346-5511 Suite 300, Erb Memorial Union P.O. Box 3159, Eugene, OR 97403 E-mail: editor@dailyemerald.com Online: www.dailyemerald.com Wednesday, January 7,2004 Oregon Daily Emerald COMMENTARY Editor in Chief: Brad Schmidt Managing Editor: Jan Tobias Montiy Editorial Editor: Travis Willse EDITORIAL Government firewalls failed to safeguard nation's cattle In what was probably a footnote in the daily news April 4,2001, representatives from the Food and Drug Adminis tration, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the beef indus try and consumer advocates convened to testify before the tongue-tiring Senate Commerce Subcommittee on Con sumer Affairs, Foreign Commerce and Tourism. The month before, the USDA seized a flock of sheep in Vermont after several had been diagnosed with scrapie, a disease similar to bovine spongiform encephalopathy — mad cow disease. In the 16 years before, since the symptoms of "Cow 133" (head tremors, loss of coordination and weight loss) were identified, the disease proved to be a constant bane to Britain, prompting other countries to ban beef imports from the nation. In May of 1995, 19-year-old Stephen Churchill died from new variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease, the human form of BSE. (Both diseases are part of a group of so-called transmissible spongiform encephalopathies, diseases that attack the brain, which also include deer and elk-afflicting chronic wasting diseases and kuru, a disease found in cannibals in Papua New Guinea.) Lawmakers were surely interested, then, in knowing whether American safeguards were enough to keep mad cow disease — which peaked at 100,000 confirmed infections in Britain — from crossing American borders. Caroline Smith DeWaal, director of the food safety pro gram for the Center of Science in the Public Interest, was justifiably concerned. ihe U.S. has had firewalls in place to protect the cattle population for getting infected with mad cow disease," Smith DeWaal told CNN, "and there are some gaps in these firewalls." But those gaps were large ones: A General Accounting Office report issued in 2000 revealed that one-fifth of feed processing plants weren't even aware of U.S. regulations de signed to prevent American cattle from contracting BSE. But, government officials seem to have faulted. Regardless, those firewalls failed last year, as Americans learned Dec. 23 that mad cow disease had been found in Washington state, and the nearly hysterical response to the single incidence of the disease here is already damaging. Several nations, including Japan, South Korea and Taiwan have banned imports of American beef. And the domestic beef industry is already making groaning adjustments not to become, well, dead meat. Fremont Beef in Fremont Neb., laid off 49 of its 131 workers in response to the bans — most of the processor's sales came from exports to Japan. Caution is prudent but given that there's a very small chance contaminated material actually made it to the dinner plate, avoiding beef now if you didn't before is probably un duly paranoid and only compounds the nation's meat woes. Still, the dark cloud of mad cow has a silver lining: The brouhaha is already prompting government agencies to in stall more effective safeguards and testing procedures. EDITORIAL POLICY This editorial represents the opinion of the Emerald editorial board. Responses can be sent to letters ©dailyemerald.com. Letters to the editor and guest commentaries are encouraged. Letters are limited to 250 words and guest commentaries to 550 words. Authors are limited to one submission per calendar month. Submission must include phone number and address for verification. The Emerald reserves the right to edit for space, grammar and style. EDITORIAL BOARD Brad Schmidt Editor in Chief Jan Tobias Montry Managing Editor Aimee Rudin Columnist Ayisha Yahya News Editor Travis Willse Editorial Editor Raoroc nil ictratnr Trashing Paradise I went to Mexico during the winter break — flew down for 10 days of sun and fun on the Pacific Coast. I stayed with my dad just outside a small town where all the locals smiled, waved and didn't try to sell me anything. I spent my mornings surfing consistent rights and my afternoons reading the books that I never finished during fall term. I didn't put shoes on once. I ate fresh avocados and papayas as Lola, the bilingual parrot, sang love songs in the background. The air was 88 degrees and the water, 80. It was beautiful — except for all the garbage. In the state of Guerro, where my dad lives, most of the people can't afford or don't have access to garbage collection services. As a result they take most of their trash outside and bum it in small piles about once a week. It's a practical and cheap way to get rid of waste. Between burning, the piles are picked over by roaming animals, scattered by the wind and spread throughout the neighborhood. The edges of the yards, which have been tenderly and careful raked, are splattered with bits of half melted plastic and rubber. Plastic bottles show up on the beach, not because they are washed up by the warm Pacific tide, but because they are blown off the top of trash piles into rivers headed for the sea. Styrofoam, buf feted upward by steady offshore breezes, perches in the cocos, indistinguishable from the local birds. As much as I hate the burning of the trash, I can't help but think that if I were Aimee Rudin Five feet of fury in the local Mexicans' shoes and forced to choose between paying a garbage col lector to take the trash away — where it will probably also be burned — and buying food for my household, I would do exactly as they do and burn the garbage. It wouldn't even be a choice. Even though I know how horrible burning petroleum-based products — like plastic — are for the environment, I would think about survival first and air quality second, or third. And this can't be right. I came back from Mexico just before midnight on Dec. 25. I traded in my sandals for shoes and my surf trunks for fleece-lined pants. As I walked through PDX toward the car, I noticed all the sanitary little dust bins, brooms, cleaning products and garbage cans. Two days after getting home, my dad sent an e-mail with a picture he had taken of his truck parked on the beach surrounded by dark green fifty-gallon trash bags. He stood holding one of the bags smiling into the camera. In his e-mail he wrote, "Dear Aimee, I spent the day cleaning up the beach in front of the house A bunch of the local kids stopped and helped me. It was awe some. I filled eight Hefty bags and could have filled eight more. Love Dad." I fired back a short note. "Dad, That's great, but now what do you do with the filled garbage bags? Love, Aimee" Contact the columnist at aimeerudin@dailyemerald.com. Her opinions do not necessarily represent those of the Emerald. Columnist has wrong idea about PETA I am outraged at the obtuse opinions ex pressed in the recent article "Preposterous PEIA" (ODE, Nov. 14). First of all, PETA does not spend the ma jority of its budget on animal shelters be cause it focuses on the four areas in which the largest numbers of animals suffer the COMMENTARY olfactory in the entertainment industry. PETA's mis sion, contrary to Willse's idea of "the group's largely fanatical philosophy" is to protect an imals from exploitation and cruelty and bring about positive changes in the ways hu mans regard other species. Secondly, if PEIA has to use images of the holocaust and known cancer sufferer Mayor Giuliani to get its message to people, so be it! PETA's campaign "Holocaust on your plate" can hardly be called "an appalling af front to every Jew" because it is based on the writings of revered Jewish writer-philoso pherlsaacJBasheyis Singet wha saidTnxe-... most intensely and for the longest periods farms, labs, in the fur trade; and lation to animals, all people are Nazis; for [them] it is an eternal Treblinka." The com parison of animal exploitation to the holo caust is consistent with the longstanding Jewish tradition of promoting kindness to animals (Lewis Regenstein, Jewish colum nist-author). According to Willse, "animal testing is es sential" and "PEIA seems to lack the appreci ation for human life or decency"? Human clinical studies and computer simulations are faster, more reliable, less expensive and more humane than animal tests. Animal models differ from their human counter parts, conclusions drawn from animal re search are likely to delay progress, mislead, and do harm to the patient (M A Fadali, Car diovascular and Thoracic Surgeon). In the last two decades many drugs (among them Thalidomide, Opren, phenacitin, Eferol, Oraflex, Suprol and Selacryn) were taken off the market after causing hundreds of deaths and/or injuries to humans, but were initially approved by the FDA after testing on animals showed favorable results. Many animal ex periments give misleading results and with -regard. to human health we'd probably be better off if we hadn't relied on them. Animal tests are primitive compared to modem technology. For example, instead of dripping chemicals into animals' eyes to test toxicity, researchers can now grow a layer of cells on a membrane and monitor changes in electrical resistance to test chemicals. Many advances in our society came from others' exploitation — for examples, roads were built by slaves, yet we still drive on them. We can't change the past. We can't stop all suffering; that doesn't mean we shouldn't stop any. Willse also believes "the use of animals for food" is acceptable as long as that use "is reasonable." Reasonable? We feed so much grain to animals (raised for food) that if we all became vegetarians, we would save a quantity of food equal to the caloric needs of 8.7 billion people more than the entire human population. Our world today allows for kinder, gentler ways to feed, clothe, entertain and educate ourselves other than by killing animals. Jennifer Facciuto is an undeclared senior and PETA member.
