In 1999 a coalition of anti-meat activist groups tried to capitalize on two ordinary Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) deaths by suing the Federal government, claiming that mad cow disease (and the wholly invented “mad deer” disease) was responsible. If you’ve read our groundbreaking report Mad Cow: A New American Scare Campaign, you already know this story.
Now it seems Ralph Nader’s activist group Public Citizen is trying to re-energize this scare campaign. A new press release describes how Public Citizen is petitioning the new Secretary of Agriculture to institute a variety of unnecessary reforms. In their letter to Secretary Ann Veneman, Public Citizen outlines an agenda strikingly similar to the 1999 lawsuits. Even stranger, the original coalition of nanny groups co-signed the petition.
