I absolutely agree - positives should be dealt with within several weeks - with maybe 6-month suspension plus a big fine for a first positive, then 2 or 4 years suspension for a second, and life ban for a third.
While there were certainly a lot of suspicious delays in the beginning of the case, let’s not forget that the case would have been over now, and Bert sidelined, if RFEC had found him guilty. He could have appealed, but he couldn’t have ridden while he was waiting for the appeal process to play out.
So the main reason this case is dragging on is because of the RFEC decision. While I disagree with this decision, given that he was acquitted, he has to be allowed to ride. That’s only fair given, again, the decision that was handed down.
This is an unusual situation, though, hardly likely enough to happen often enough IMO in the future for us to worry about changing the procedures to avoid it. It only occurs when a rider is acquitted by his local federation, and UCI or WADA decides to appeal. I’m not saying this situation can’t happen again, but it won’t happen very often.
OK, obviously not everyone agrees with this. Some people have argued that the procedures should be streamlined/centralized, taken out of the hands of the local feds. That would avoid this possible limbo situation entirely, but there is a cost—no appeal of the decision would be possible. That’s really the heart of the matter, I think. Do you have a process that allows an appeal, or not? If all doping decisions go directly to WADA, it seems to me there is no possible appeal. Or if there is, say, to UCI, then again, limbo is possible.
IOW, the root cause of this situation Bert finds himself in is the possibility of an appeal. If either side can appeal a decision, then whenever a rider is acquitted, there is the possibility of an appeal by the prosecution, which will result in the situation we now find with Bert. But appeal is an integral part of most justice systems, and something I would think the doping procedures would not want to do away with.
I agree with most of your post but this part is not true. Contador's team doesn't claim Spanish meat is likely to be contaminated. In fact, the opposite was a central part of their reasoning to turn "no significant negligence" (1-year ban) into "no negligence" (acquitted)
This was the essence of Python’s “contradictory yet intuitive” description. Bert is trying to have his cake and eat it too. On the one hand, to use the rarity of Spanish meat contamination as a way of arguing that he bears no fault whatsoever for not avoiding eating that meat. But he is also trying to say that meat contamination is common enough that he could in fact have tested positive.
As I said before, I don’t think it works. It is either one or the other. The only way it could be both is if there were extensive contamination of meat that had somehow been completely hidden from public knowledge. But there isn’t. The testing statistics show very clearly that isn’t the case. Again, there may be extensive doping of cattle that is hidden from the public, but the meat from the cattle that reaches the market is not contaminated, not enough to cause a positive.
The only other argument is that some of the meat sold in Spain comes from other countries, particularly South America, where standards are non-existent or looser. But this meat is tested, too. So the only way to make this case is to argue that there is extensive fraud in the testing process, that large amounts of South American meat (which comprises about 15% of the total Spanish market) slips through border controls. But this claim is very far from proven.
IOW, for Bert's have-cake-and-eat-it-too argument to work, he has to argue that a huge problem with the Spanish meat testing system, easily large enough to rank as a major national scandal, has been discovered only through the diligent efforts of his lawyers. No one ever suspected it until he tested positive and his defense began digging. Come on.
Nice Picture! 
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