When was the last time you heard of a company suing the government for more regulation of their products? Begging to spend hundreds of millions more dollars on testing than the law requires? And then being turned down on the grounds that such extra effort would be harmful to Americans?

Indeed, the developments at Creekstone suggest that, like so many government agencies, the USDA is caught in a conflict of interests between protecting consumers’ health and promoting the industry it is supposed to be regulating. Earlier this year, PR Watch suggested that the “compromised agency” should be replaced with an independent body dedicated solely to food safety, just as Britain did when its Mad Cow crisis broke. Or, in our view, the government should get completely out of the food safety business, and let private companies provide the service, much the way that Underwriters Laboratories has done for electrical appliances. Creekstone for its part has vowed legal action against the USDA to get a go-ahead on the testing, and regain access to Japan and other international markets.