Last week our colleague, Michael Hansen, a senior scientist here at Consumers Union, wrote about the court battle between a meatpacker and the U.S. Department of Agriculture over testing for mad cow disease. Today, we are pleased to see a piece he wrote on the issue, Stop the Madness, in the Op-Ed section of The New York Times.

In his piece, Hansen explains why in Korea tens of thousands of protesters have taken to the streets to speak out against their president's attempt to reopen the market to U.S. beef. Their fear is that the beef could be tainted with mad cow disease, which can be fatal to humans and which was found in this country in 2003.

"American beef producers could easily allay those fears by subjecting every cow at slaughter to the so-called rapid test, which costs about $20 per carcass and screens for this brain-wasting disease in a few hours rather than days," Hansen wrote. "But the United States Department of Agriculture won’t allow that."

Find out why the USDA objects by reading Hansen's Op-Ed piece and his earlier blog entry, then tell us what you think in the comments section below.