Originally posted by: MonstaThrilla
Did any of you actually
read the article?
Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean says the Bush administration missed an opportunity to soften the impact of the country's first mad cow scare and that the American beef industry should receive federal aid to weather the crisis.
The former governor, whose state has a large dairy cow population, said the Bush administration failed to aggressively set up a tracking system that would allow the government to quickly track the origins of the sick cow, quarantine other animals it came in contact with and assure the marketplace the rest of the meat supply is safe.
"What we need in this country is instant traceability," he said.
Dean said such a system should have been set up quickly after the mad cow scare that devastated the British beef industry in the mid- to late-1990s. The Bush administration was still devising its plan when the sick cow was slaughtered Dec. 9, and on Friday the government still hadn't determine the infected animal's origins.
"This just shows the complete lack of foresight by the Bush administration once again," Dean said. "This is something that easily could be predicted and was predicted."
Dean said as a result the beef industry will suffer enormously. Officials said Friday 90 percent of the foreign markets for American beef have been closed off because of the announcement.
Asked if he supported a federal economic aid package for the industry, Dean said: "The answer is, yes, of course I do. The question is how much? And we don't know how much yet."
Dean said the government's first job, before the economic damage is calculated, must be to "close down that impact as soon as possible" by tracing the cow's origins and credibly reassuring the American public and the world that the rest of the U.S. beef supply is safe.
As a doctor, Dean said he was more concerned about the impact of the announcement on the U.S. economy than on public health. "The truth is this is going to have a minimal health impact," he said.
Dean criticizes the whole Bush administration not just Bush. As a civics lesson, the USDA is in the executive branch of federal government and its Secretary sits on the Administration's Cabinet. Where does he blame Bush for "a Canadian cow got mad cow and was sent to America"? The song "Blame Canada" just popped into my head BTW...
Secondly, his point more major point was that the federal government should have softened the financial impact with federal aid. You may disagree with that idea, but again he doesn't blame George W. Bush for the diseased bitch.
So show me where he points the finger directly at Bush,
otherwise it seems you Dean-bashers are the ones grasping at straws...
EDIT: Then, in the Reuters article he plainly states:
"You can't blame the president because a cow came down with BSE , but you can blame the Bush administration for a lot of what's going to happen to beef farmers over the next couple of weeks," Dean said.
*places several straws in hard to reach places for Dean-bashers*