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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
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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.