Small Business. It's what's for dinner.

Washington Post:

To Creekstone Farms manager Bill Fielding, his company's idea does not seem unreasonable. In order to satisfy its very important customers in Japan -- customers the company needs to survive -- Creekstone wants to test for mad cow disease every one of the cattle it slaughters....

But there is a big obstacle in the way of Creekstone's mad cow initiative: The U.S. Department of Agriculture will not allow it.

Whoa there, free-market cowboys. Holster your six-shooters. The black hats in this Rodeo ain't who you want them to be.

"That the USDA is standing in our way makes no sense," Fielding said. "Their position flies in the face of the basic rule of business -- that the customer is always right, and our job is to meet their demands."

Yeah. Why would they do that?

As a small, upscale slaughterhouse and meatpacker, Creekstone already does for its domestic and foreign customers many things that competitors do not do. It specializes in premium-quality Black Angus beef, accepts fewer and fewer animals that have been fed antibiotics or hormones, and can trace the origin of each animal it receives....

Japan's intense sensitivity over the issue began in 2001, when mad cow disease was first detected in an animal there. Since then, universal testing there has found 10 more infected animals, and few have had the characteristics that normally put an animal at high risk.....

Universal testing? Examining every animal, instead of some compromise profiling or aggregate sampling regimen cobbled together by USDA and the packing industry? If the Japanese want 100% testing for $50/lb premium beef, not a problem. Creekstone would test for Martian Pathogens if that's what its customers wanted. Then what is the problem?

Ladies and Gentlemen, meet "The Money":

While all American beef exporters have been hurt by the ban on sales abroad, Creekstone is especially vulnerable because it is small -- with less than 1 percent of the market -- and it only packs beef. The big players in the business -- companies such as Tyson Foods, Swift & Co. and Smithfield Foods -- also sell pork and chicken and can weather the beef ban much better.

If Japan will not buy their beef, the more diversified companies can sell pork, which they are doing now at a tidy profit. As a result, Fielding says, the beef export ban works to the advantage of the big firms and could end up squeezing many small operations such as his out of business.

Now, meet "The Mouth" of The Money:

The largest and most powerful meat-packing companies are dead set against Creekstone's proposal, as is the group that represents ranchers and feedlot owners, the National Cattlemen's Beef Association.

Association President Jan Lyons said that allowing one company to test all its cattle could quickly snowball into a situation where all companies would have to do similar testing. "If testing is allowed at Creekstone and other companies, we think it would become the international standard and the domestic standard, too," she said. "But it's a standard that's not based on science, would be very expensive and so is something our government definitely needs to resist."

Not based on science. Very expensive. Both of those PR statements are patently untrue. They lack not only fact, they abrogate integrity.

Wampum finds a concurrent article in the Miami Herald with real numbers: USDA approved bare bones standards testing, under long term study, costs $375 per head of cattle. Creekstone's Tiffany Science testing? $18 per. Notice the "long-term-study"? That's Greek for Stalling. It's also the favored approach of the Beef industry--rather than endorse a free-market solution that costs an additional 0.1 of X, they'd prefer to sit on the fence, book that extra 0.1 profit for a few more years, then claim shock and threaten mass economic woe when the eventual Industry-USDA study says it'll cost 30*X to test every animal.

Avarice, Pride and Sloth? Meet strategic decision-making. Strategic decision-making? Meet Avarice, Pride and Sloth.

The funny and sad part? The industry "leaders" are the sheep. The real leader, Creekstone and Bill Fielding, they're being led to the slaughter.

In southeast Kansas, the issue is being closely watched. Kevin Gallaway, owner of Gallaway's steak restaurant in Winfield, a buyer of Creekstone beef, said the USDA should approve the testing:

"If our government keeps the company from testing the animals and it goes under as a result," he said, "I can tell you that people around here would be plenty angry about it."

And so they should be. But why isn't Kevin just as pissed at NCBA, Tyson, Swift and Smithfield? That's whose water Anne Venneman, the head of USDA, is carrying--water that's gonna drown Kevin's neighbor and favored supplier.

Why? Because that would be "counter-intuitive," I guess. Goverment is always dysfunctional. But "Free markets" keep business efficient and pure. That's it. Ubetcha. Yessiree.

I'm not certain about others, but me, I'm insulted when fed Spam and told to think "Great Filet!" It seems conservative pro-business firebrand Christopher Caldwell feels the same, citing CBS/Gallup: "Do you think U.S. executives are honest?" No - 67%. Yes - 27%.

Kind of hard to say those answers are skewed by a biased or confusingly worded question.

True or not, unfair or not, perception is reality. And it's pretty damn hard to sell when your customer is gripping his wallet and scanning for a policeman, just in case.

Substitute seat belts, pasteurization, air travel, flouridated water, or whatever for Creekstone's 100% Bovine Spongiform Encephalitis-Free beef and, once again, we see organizations public and private close the wagons, then camp outside the circle. Public and private. Nobody has a franchise on virtue. Or common sense.

Too bad the Business Roundtable doesn't round up a posse over that one.


Read the whole Washington Post article, or visit Wampum, who far better flays this tale of small and big business in detail.