USDA Rumored To Be Readying Faith Based Initiative To Deal With Mad Cow Disease

USDA official: "No need to pray about this Mad Cow Crisis, we found the cow, eventually we'll find all the meat from it. People should just trust us. After all, have you ever tried to get advice from God's hotline on how to broil a Christmas roast, or bake a Thanksgiving turkey?"

December 25, 2003
By Garnet R. Chaney, Staff Correspondent

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia (HNN) -- The USDA would not confirm a leak that it was preparing to launch a faith based initiative to deal with the current outbreak of Mad Cow Disease. On Christmas Eve, Secretary Veneman appeared on several morning news programs to proclaim the sufficiency of the government's current approaches to testing, and was unwilling to ask anyone to do anything beyond having faith in the government's ability to protect us all with their current protocols. And, of course, to continue eating beef. She avoided the issue of Santa Claus entirely.

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On the morning shows, the Secretary was asked why an animal slaughtered on December 9th was not discovered to be have presumptive BSE until two weeks later, just before Christmas Eve, and after the meat product from the animal had moved on to at least two other processing plants. The Secretary asserted that it was extremely fortunate that the government could move so quickly. It was rare for the government to determine something of such a great importance as this in a period of time as short as two weeks.  Leading experts were not able to reach a consensus on whether pointing out this fact would improve the public's faith in the government, or whether it would erode confidence. However all agreed that for a government agency, this was a surprisingly quick response.

However an anonymous source within the USDA said that if the public faith in the government procedures seems to be waning, there are plans in place to launch a faith-based initiative to ask the public to trust that God will protect our food supply. "We trust in God for our money, why not also for  our food?" said the source.

The USDA recently launched a faith based website at http://www.usda.gov/fbci/index.html.  Some experts have privately wondered if Secretary Veneman's speech in February of 2003 was an attempt to set the stage for the introduction of faith-based approaches for dealing with problems in managing the safety of the food supply.

"The U.S. Department of Agriculture has a long history or working with faith-based organizations in some of our programs. A lot of people don't realize that the Department of Agriculture operates the school lunch program, the school breakfast program, the food stamp program, the TEFAP program, the WIC program. All of the feeding programs are operated from USDA. And in many of these programs we partner with faith-based and community organizations to deliver our services." - Secretary Ann M. Veneman February 18,2003

While details are sketchy, it is believed that this program has been designed with an ecumenical emphasis. Some of it's details are believed to include:

• Rabbi's would be deputized as representatives of the USDA, and be stationed at major slaughterhouses nationwide to bless the dying animals.
• Muslim clerics would be asked to provide the FBI with lists of congregation members who would be prescreened and then called upon to provide volunteer halal certification of the meat products of a number of slaughterhouses and grocery store chains.
• Catholic priests would be allowed into the public schools to bless the cafeterias and food lines. However, they would only be allowed to do this after school hours when all students have been cleared from the cafeteria.
• A gold-ribbon task force would be empanelled to investigate lacto-oval vegetarian alternatives to the meat based food program in the public schools.
• Recalled meat that is tested, and that the government asserts is safe, would be offered to private religious schools for their lunch programs. It would also be offered to Faith-Based & Community Organizations, expanding Veneman's September announcement of an initiative to donate non-fat dry milk from dairies not on the government quarantine list.

There was never any thought of bringing back any kind of in-school prayer, or meal blessing. "The idea of having prayer in the public schools is even more horrible and controversial than the possibility that our testing of the nations food supply is not sufficient," said the source.

When asked about whether investigation of vegetarian alternatives to the conventional school breakfast of ham, eggs, and milk, and the typical school lunch of chop steak, beef jerky, cheeseburgers, and beef fat fried french fries, might undermine the  public's faith in meat products, the source said "since milk and eggs are heavily subsidized and controlled by the government, we don't mind increasing the public's reliance on them."

An idea to teach school children how to raise their own safe food at home was cancelled in committee discussions. "Kids might overuse fertilizer, or hurt themselves on the garden tools, or might even accidentally ingest some of the dirt. Plus it would be much too costly to have the government inspecting thousands of home gardens", explained the source.

The source pointed out that a key goal of such initiatives is to support public policies, such as furthering reliance on the government.

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Added the source, "According to President Bush, our faith based initiative needs to achieve a valid public purpose, and encouraging self-sufficiency has never been proven to increase the governments reach or abilities to protect the people. When people learn to rely on the government, it increases the government's opportunity to show compassion for the public."

The source would not rule out new government protections on the school's lunch supply, including prohibition of non-USDA inspected food stuffs in packed school lunches. "The public should see the great proactive job we are currently doing to protect the nation's school food supply. An example of this is the fact that none of the meat from the BSE infected animal has been traced to any school cafeteria."

"We believe it's reasonable to ask people who don't trust the government to rely on God to protect them. When 'It's God's Will' is invoked to explain away problems in the screening of the food supply, it helps us avoid further increasing government liability."

According to the source, there are no current plans to implement a national food supply alert system. "We are working with the Office of Homeland Security to ensure that the national terror alert level adequately reflects any credible terrorist threats to the nation's food supply. The public is already confused enough over the meaning of the current colors, it could be very difficult for the public to understand a separate status concerning the food supply." 

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