coxandforkum.com
Mad Mad World

To those of you are also following my Detroit guest blog, forgive the redundancy but this is important enough to cross post and thanks to my fellow DNews bloggers, Cox and Forkum, for the graphic. I only wish they were leaning more towards our side.

I don't get this. The Bush administration wants to test our hair, saliva and sweat before we can get a job. In his State of the Union address, Bush told us he wants to spend 23 million dollars to test our children's urine before they can receive a publicly funded education.

The White House Prohibition Protectors say "random drug testing of students can survive legal challenges and is 'dirt cheap'." And indeed the price has dropped as a drug testing industry mushroomed in response to the ill-advised policy of treating teenagers like criminals.

So explain this to me, if our government is so vitally interested in what we voluntarily put into our bodies, why did the Department of Agriculture refuse to allow a Kansas beef producer to test all of its cattle for mad cow disease, saying such sweeping tests as proposed by Creekstone Farms were not scientifically warranted?

Lobbying groups for cattle ranchers and slaughterhouses, who called 100% testing misleading to consumers because "it would create a false impression that untested beef was not safe", were pleased by the decision. Gary Weber speaking for the cattlemen's association said it was "absolutely not about the money."

Yeah, right. Speaking as a consumer who must trust the FDA to certify the safety of what I have no choice but to consume -- since I don't own a ranch -- I would rather be "misled" by 100% testing of my food than invaded by 100% testing of my bodily fluids.