From: Gene McAloon 

There is a scandal involved here, but it has nothing to do with a cover-up. The
scandal is that conservative administrations are ideologically opposed to
government regulation of private industry. Even where public health is
involved,
it is expected that industry should regulate itself.  Industry regulates
itself minimally on a cost/benefit basis. Therefore there is never enough
regulation to
satisfy the public interest. Even when meat processing plants or slaughter
houses are repeatedly cited for violations on the basis of what little
government inspection does take place, the fines if imposed at all are
minimal and prosecutions rare. All this has been the story since the Reagan
years.

The USDA has good reason to delay as much as possible any request for
information under the Freedom of Information law when it is reluctant to
reveal information that in this case would show how little government
regulation there is and how ineffective it is. It would also point up how
utterly inadequate industry regulation is and always has been.

That is the scandal here and with an election coming up the administration
is naturally anxious to sweep the whole thing under the rug if at all
possible. Delay in releasing information is the first step in that process.

On Fri, 26 Dec 2003 13:41:12 -0800, Randall Parker
 wrote:

>Geo,
>
>No I don't expect a cover-up. I expect that lots of cows will be tested and
the
>results of those tests will be made public. This one positive test was made
public
>rather quickly after the result came up positive, right?
>
>Billions at risk: Billions are already lost. Exports that would have happened
will
>not happen. Some US consumers will spend less as well. The USDA and industry
are
>going to search like crazy to try to figure out whether this is an isolated
case. It
>might well be. Prion disease is suspected of arising spontaneously and not all
cases
>are the result of transmission.
>
>You can make a case that the cattle industry ought to test more. But if they
test
>20,000 a year and years go by before finding a single case then this hardly
sounds
>like a big threat to be worried about.
>
>What do each of those tests cost? Costs matter. Let me put some meat on this
argument
>with a starting guess on what a mad cow test might cost just to illustrate.
Suppose
>the test costs, say, $100 each. At 20,000 cattle tested per year that'd be $2
mil per
>year and maybe only one case is found in 10 years (it might take 20 years -
I'm just
>trying to do a scenario) and so that is $20 mil a case. That case might not
even
>cause any human cases even if the cow's muscle meat is sold to market. So is
would
>testing 100,000 a year be a cost effective way to save human lives? That'd be
$100
>mil. Would doing that even save any human lives? It is not clear. Compare that
to the
>dollar cost of saving human lives in cars. If the mad cow test is as expensive
as my
>guess (and I have no idea) then, no, it is not a cost effective way to
increase
>safety and reduce risk.
>
>There are tons of risks out there. Each risk has a different price tag
associated
>with reducing its cost. If you want to argue that the USDA and cattle industry
are
>being lax you have to make an economic case that the cost of reducing the
risks will
>not be enormous.
>
>
>http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids
=7604170&dopt=Abstract
>    Excerpt:
>Let us put cost per life saved in context with some numbers from regulatory
studies:
>  The 587 interventions identified ranged from those that save more resources
than
>they cost, to those costing more than 10 billion dollars per year of life
saved.
>Overall, the median intervention costs $42,000 per life-year saved. The median
>medical intervention cost $19,000/life-year; injury reduction
$48,000/life-year; and
>toxin control $2,800,000/life-year. Cost/life-year ratios and bibliographic
>references for more than 500 life-saving interventions are provided.
>
>    If cost per life saved gets too high then the added costs cause economic
activity
>in other parts of an ecnomy or reduction of activity that leads to more deaths
than
>lives saved.
>http://www.perc.org/publications/percreports/tang_sept2002.php?s=2
>    Excerpts:
>In principle, high-cost regulations could lead to sufficient extra fatalities
>elsewhere to yield a net overall rise in mortality. To date, it has been
difficult to
>obtain a reliable estimate of whether this has happened. Recent research
(Gerdtham
>and Johanesson 2002) helps resolve this difficulty, revealing that any
regulation
>costing more than about $8.4 million for each life "saved"
will cause overall
>fatalities to rise.
>
>By adjusting for these and other factors, the authors can home in precisely on
the
>link between income and mortality, estimating the impact with an unprecedented
degree
>of reliability. Depending on how the income loss is borne, the authors find
that a
>drop of about $7 million to $10 million in a nation's aggregate income will
induce
>one more fatality in the economy. For example, if it is assumed that the
income loss
>is borne proportionately at all income levels, the figure of $8.4 million is
obtained.
>
>The practical import is that any regulation that costs more than about $8.4
million
>to save one life will actually cause overall mortality rate to rise, because
the loss
>of income induces more than one fatality.
>    ....
>On the bright side, all three of the Federal Aviation Administration
regulations
>studied by Morrall cost less than $8.4 million per life saved, and thus
arguably
>yield a net saving of lives. The same is true for all four of the National
Highway
>Traffic Safety Administration rules.
>
>The record is not so good for the Occupational Safety and Health
Administration
>(OSHA). Indeed, the seventeen OSHA regulations studied by Morrall are about
evenly
>divided between those cheap enough to safe lives on balance and those (such as
OSHA's
>ethylene dibromide and formaldehyde rules) so costly that they have no doubt
killed
>far more people than would have died in the absence of the regulations.
>
>But the worst offender is the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which has
an
>almost unblemished record of killing us with its regulations. Of the sixteen
EPA
>regulations studied by Morrall, two probably have saved lives on balance (one
>regulates chloroform and related chemicals, the other restricts fugitive
emissions of
>benzene, such as at gas pumps). Another EPA rule (regulating uranium mines) is
likely
>a "wash," killing about as many people as it has saved.
>
>The other thirteen EPA rules are all killers. The arsenic standard, for
example,
>costs almost $27 million per life saved according to the official numbers.
>
>
>One other note about cost per life saved: The medical treatments are not as
valuable
>as they sound if they simply delay death from a disease for a short period of
time.
>So, for instance, a defibrillator isn't going to add as many years to a saved
>person's life than a safety measure that saves a life from a car accident. The
car
>accident victim probably has many more years to live on average than the heart
attack
>victim.
>
>Geo. wrote:
>
>> If there are billions of US dollars at risk, do you think it's going to
>> happen any time before a number of people get sick here?
>>
>> Geo.
>>
>>

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