Until recently, it was not that hard to understand the standoff between the U.S. and Japanese governments over this country's ban on imports of American beef. Both nations have experienced mad cow disease scares, but they have responded differently. Japan, with 11 cases of the disease since 2001, tests all its cattle for infection and wants the United States to do the same before it will lift the ban. The U.S., with just one domestic case, maintains that blanket testing is "unscientific" and unnecessary. Arguments on both sides have merit, which is why the impasse has lasted nearly four months and shows no signs of being resolved soon. This month, however, the dispute took a turn that defied understanding.

A small American meatpacking company had actually come up with a proposal that, while not solving the larger problem, at least suggested a way of outflanking it. Creekstone Farms Premium Beef, a so-called boutique producer in Kansas, sells around 25 percent of its high-quality Black Angus beef to Japan. With no other product to fall back on, the company was hit hard when the beef import ban was imposed in December. So it sought the U.S. government's permission to conduct its own tests of every cow for mad cow disease, formally known as bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or BSE, to satisfy its Japanese customers.

Last month, the USDA sounded cautiously receptive to the idea. But earlier this month, to nearly everyone's surprise (except, of course, the big U.S. slaughterhouses that had lobbied fiercely against it), the department rejected it.