Alliance for Natural Health May 8, 2012 More and more countries
are banning imports of American food products for safety
reasons. Last week, Indonesia became the first country to halt
imports of US beef following the discovery of an American dairy
cow infected with mad cow disease, or bovine spongiform
encephalopathy. The disease is fatal to cows and can cause a
deadly brain disease in people who eat tainted beef. “We will
lift the ban as soon as the US can assure us its dairy cows are
free of mad cow disease,” said Rusman Heriawan, Indonesia’s vice
agriculture minister. “It could be one month or one year. It
depends on how long it takes to resolve this case.” One would
think the US government would immediately test beef to make sure
it’s safe. But the USDA, which regulates the test, administers
it to less than 1% of slaughtered cows. Worse, until 2007 it was
illegal for private beef producers to test their own cows for
the disease! Larger meat companies feared that if smaller
producers tested their meat and