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52 U. Kan. L. Rev. 897 (2003-2004)
Our Science Is Sound Science and Their Science Is Junk Science: Science-Based Strategies for Avoiding Accountability and Responsibility for Risk-Producing Products and Activities

handle is hein.journals/ukalr52 and id is 911 raw text is: Our Science is Sound Science and Their Science is Junk Science: Science-Based Strategies for Avoiding Accountability and Responsibility for Risk-Producing Products and Activities Thomas 0. McGarity* I. INTRODUCTION When officials discovered the first mad cow in Washington State last December, U.S. consumer groups urged the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) to expand its mad cow testing program radically from the paltry 20,000 downer cattle tested out of 35 million slaughtered annually.' In response, USDA Secretary Ann Veneman announced that the Department would double the testing program to 40,000 downer cattle, but it would not expand the program beyond that. Concerned that a much larger testing program would discover additional mad cows, the cattle industry applauded this decision. Testing cattle for mad cow disease is not inexpensive. Testing a half-million cows (both downers and uppers) would cost tens of millions of dollars, and that cost would ultimately be borne either by consumers of red meat or by taxpayers. Testing 100 percent of slaughtered cattle, as demanded by some consumer groups and Japanese importers, could be prohibitively expensive. Yet Secretary Veneman's explanation for refusing demands that USDA acquire more information on the health of U.S. cattle did not even mention cost. She dismissed * W. James Kronzer Chair in Trial and Appellate Advocacy, University of Texas School of Law; President, Center for Progressive Regulation. This Article represents a small part of the thinking behind a larger project that the author and Professor Wendy E. Wagner are engaged in to document, analyze and offer solutions for the problems that regulatory agencies encounter in using scientific information in the decisionmaking process. The author would like to thank the Order of the Coif for providing the opportunity to present a version of this Article as the 2004 Coif Lecture. 1. Marian Burros & Donald G. McNeil, Jr., U.S. Inspections for Disease Lag Behind Those Abroad, N.Y. TIMES, Dec. 24, 2003, at A19.

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