Wholly Cow!

Holy Crap, that is!

An appeals court has found that a the federal government can prohibit a small meat packer company from testing all of its cows for BSE, that is, for Mad Cow disease. Apparently the government would want to do this because they've been lobbied by larger companies which don't want to have to compete with a small company advertising "we test all our cows instead of just a tiny fraction of them".
Now, the fact that the US government should try to get away with such a regulation doesn't surprise me: it depresses me, but in the current pro-megacorps environment that the republicans have created (with the compliance it must be said, at times, of democrats as well) it doesn't surprise me.
But the courts are supposed to be independent, and I didn't really realise how stacked they had been with the "good for big bidness means good for everyone" cronies.

Yours, mad as a cow,
N.