Imagine what would happen if a small automobile manufacturer marketed its vehicles primarily on its rigorous safety standards and was ordered by the government to cease all tests that went above and beyond the government’s prescribed safety standards, primarily because of fear that said tests would “catch on” with buyers and force larger manufacturers to adopt them as well.

The result would be predictable — both consumer advocates and champions of the free market would be up in arms over what amounts to such a blatant attack on both consumer safety and business innovation. Imagine — the government actually forbidding a company from holding its products to a higher standard of safety than is required.

The above allegory is unfortunately not a fantasy. On April 16, the USDA officially announced it would block additional mad cow testing carried out by small beef producer Creekstone Farms, which had already spent $500,000 to build its own laboratory meeting USDA standards in order to test all of its beef for bovine spongiform encephalopathy, more commonly known as “mad cow disease.”

Creekstone isn’t attempting to opt out of its existing obligations to have its beef inspected. Rather, as manager Bill Fielding said in an April 16 Washington Post article, the matter is simply one of business survival: In order to continue to supply niche markets like Japan that demand testing of all imported beef from countries which have had cases of mad cow disease, Creekstone needs to test all of its beef.

However, the USDA maintains exclusive control over the reagents required to test for mad cow disease — and they refuse to let labs outside of the government’s testing program to acquire them.

Fielding puts his objections bluntly: “That the USDA is standing in our way makes no sense. 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.”

What Creekstone is asking for isn’t unique treatment or exemption from USDA regulations — but rather the right to conduct additional testing in order to cater to unique markets, a plea the agency has proven wholly unsympathetic to.

Its official position, as it told the Post, is that such testing is scientifically unnecessary and would possibly provoke larger producers to adopt said standards based upon false consumer perceptions.

Said USDA Undersecretary Bill Hawks, “The use of the test as proposed by Creekstone would have implied a consumer safety aspect that is not scientifically warranted.” National Cattlemen’s Beef Association (the primary livestock growers’ lobbying group) President Jan Lyons added these fears, saying, “If testing is allowed at Creekstone and other companies, we think it would become the international standard and the domestic standard too.

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.”

What you are observing here is a classic case of “agency capture” — the agency established to regulate an industry has instead become the pawn of said industry to protect its own interests. Indeed, whether said regulations and the cost that comes with them should become the new domestic standard should be strictly the choice of consumers. If consumers wish to pay a premium for additional testing to assuage their fears, what place is it of the government to step in and tell them to do otherwise? Likewise, for consumers who allow science to be their guide, they are still free to shop for cheaper meats that are tested only by standards known to have scientific merit.

Yet somehow, such a fear of consumers exists both within the industry and the agency set to regulate it that both believe the consumer must not be allowed such choice — but why?

What harm could honestly be seen in the consumers freely exercising their preferences via the free market?

For Creekstone, however, the situation is not so academic. If nothing is done soon and it is still unable to export beef to countries such as Japan, it will be out of business, along with its 790 employees, who will find themselves out on the streets — all for the sake of protecting consumers from themselves.