'Splain This

I’m a numbers guy and I did the numbers on this one and I don’t unsderstand.
Last year, as I’m sure you’ll remember, a video was released by the Humane Society showing "downer" cows at the Westland Hallmark slaughterhouse being "mistreated" on the way to slaughter. This spurred a media outcry which announced the public’s rage causing a recall of 143 million pounds of beef at a taxpayer cost of $67 million plus. ($67M was the bill sent by the Fed to the company) The company filed bankruptcy and went out of business causing 220 employees to lose their jobs. Of course, Westland Hallmark never paid the bill. Taxpayers spent almost 50 cents a pound just for the recall. That’s not counting the taxpayer loss due to schools and public institutions
having to throw away millions of pounds of meat, none of which was ever proven bad.
Now, let’s go back even further to 2003. That year, legislation was passed to keep "downer" cows out of the food supply. The reasoning behind this was that "downer" cows were more likely to get "mad cow disease." That was after the big "mad cow" scare of that year.
Between 2003 and 2008, there was no government oversight to enforce these regulations and we’re told that "downer cows" continuously made their way into our food supply. There were reports of "mad cow" in the US, but I could find no reports of "downer" cows with the disease making their way into our grocery stores. Not one. There were also no reports of old and sick cows causing any consumer sickness or disease.
Jump to this year, March 14th. Congress passed the Downer Cow Bill providing "stiffer penalties" for those allowing these cows into our food chain. This legislation was introduced by Diane Feinstein of California.
So let’s summarize this. We mistreated cows right before we killed them and let old cows get into our food chain which caused absolutely no harm to anyone, ever. I’m sure there’s a study going on somewhere that is trying to prove stressed out cows produce less protein or have tougher meat or something.
Since, march 14th, I have noticed that meat prices have skyrocketed. Hamburger was on sale yesterday for $1.89 a pound. That’s on sale. Before that, I could buy 3 pound chubs at 99 cents a pound. Now they are $2.66 but on sale were $1.33. That’s a 35% increase. RibEye, T-Bone, and Porterhouse are all over $8 a pound, more than double what they were the first of this year.
We beef eaters are seeing our grocery bill double and our tax money wasted when there was NEVER a health hazard to any of us.
Uncle R 4-29-09 (the 100th day of the Obama Administration)