As one of our rants of the week here at the Ethereal Voice, we selected an article by Joel Salatin called, “Everything I want to do is illegal.” It is all about how regulation keeps the little guy out of the market place.

A recent NY Times article demonstrates that this is no accident…..

The Agriculture Department tests less than 1 percent of slaughtered cows for the disease, which can be fatal to humans who eat tainted beef. But Kansas-based Creekstone Farms Premium Beef wants to test all of its cows.

Larger meat companies feared that move because, if Creekstone tested its meat and advertised it as safe, they might have to perform the expensive test, too.

The Agriculture Department regulates the test and argued that widespread testing could lead to a false positive that would harm the meat industry.
A federal judge ruled in March that such tests must be allowed. U.S. District Judge James Robertson noted that Creekstone sought to use the same test the government relies on and said the government didn’t have the authority to restrict it.

Basically, the meat industry is afraid that Creekstone is going to get a competitive advantage by testing all their meat and they are trying to use the Government to stop them. Shows how free market the Bush administration is.