the danger of trusting anything that a journalist says about a legal proceeding.

In the lawsuit, the government did not make an argument about “false positives.” To the contrary, the government’s brief in support of a motion for summary judgment (as well as its other briefs) argued that BSE tests would provide a overwhelming number of false negatives.

You can only test cattle for BSE (mad cow disease) upon killing them. The reason is because the only way to be sure is by testing brain tissue. Now, if a cow is slaughtered and found to have BSE, it is already too late for the rest of the herd, since it is required that all animals who have contacted the infected animal be destroyed.

The only reason you would be testing an animal for BSE is if you have reason to believe it has the disease. There are symptoms which show up in basically all cases—I’ve not heard of finding a case where there weren’t symptoms that led to the culling and testing. If you have no symptoms, you wouldn’t have cause to do the test even for the simple fact that your carcass would probably be unusable by the time the results came back. Also, all 3 US cases of BSE have come from cattle originating in Canada.

Something that most people don’t know is that ALL species of ruminant animals have their own form of BSE. Even wild animals, which merely demonstrates that it’s causes remain unknown in many cases. Also, the only way a person can get CJD is by eating infected matter…such as the brain, eyes, and spinal cord. BSE does not affect muscle or blood at all, which is why the only way to know a cow has it is by doing tests on the brain. Therefore, the only meat that would be remotely likely to be affected would be hamburger, and that is simply because the butcher may not be as careful when cutting the meat away from the carcass, and even that’s a long shot since all the affected parts I listed are removed well before any butchering happens. And, lastly, humans have been getting CJD long before the disease was ever discovered in cattle. Cannibals got it from eating other people.

Sorry for the long post. A degree in Animal Science with a beef and equine emphasis comes in handy sometimes.