Mad Cow Disease

[tonybradley]

With the recent discovery of mad cow disease infected cattle in the United States there is a lot of posturing, rhetoric and other bullshit going on now. The news I heard was that The American Cattle Association says there is nothing to worry about and that all is well. That is like taking Exxon's advice that the Valdez oil spill won't really harm anything. At any rate, I found the rant below on a list I am on. I agree with many (especially about how our "representatives" in government don't seem to "represent" anything but corporate special interests anymore- democrats and republicans alike), if not all, of the points and thought I'd share it.

As a physician, I'd like to say a few words about this Mad Cow Disease incident. It is absurd that Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman can, with a straight face, go on national TV and tell the American people that the food supply is safe and that she plans to serve beef for her Christmas dinner. If this doesn't sound like a lying beaurocrat I don't know what does. First of all, it's obvious that since this cow had MCD, there is no way the government, including this lying beaurocrat Ann Veneman, can be sure that other infected cows have not entered the food supply. Secondly and incredibly, we now learn that even when they knew this cow was diseased in some way, it's meat was allowed to enter the food supply! Apparently a law that would have prevented the use of such diseased animals was blocked by the House! How many Americans were aware that this practice is permitted by our government! I want to know which congressmen voted against the bill to ban such use of diseased cattle. They should be revealed publicly and be made to account for their failure to protect the public welfare. A congressional investigation is warranted.

A few points about MCD as I understand them:
1. The cause is not actually a living organism but rather a molecule called a "prion"
2. Cooking the meat will NOT destroy the prion, so cooking does not prevent MCD
3. The human form of MCD is called Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease
4. The disease is NOT curable and as far as I am aware always leads to dementia and death
5. The disease is contracted by eating animal tissue contaminated by the animal's infected nerve tissue (remember the spinal cord near the vertebra included in some cuts of beef)
6. The prion makes it's way to the brain of the unsuspecting victim and somehow replicates there and induces the formation of more prions from proteins in the victim's brain
7. The victim's brain becomes riddled with these abnormal proteins and microscopic holes which cause the poor soul to literally lose his mind and all meaningful higher function until he finally dies a horrible and demented death.
8. The disease only becomes apparent years after consuming infected tissue so that is would be nearly impossible to trace a specific victim to a specific lot of meat product.

With all this well known to our government (are you hearing this Mr. Bush, Sentators, Congressmen, and Ms. Veneman) how could they allow this infected cow's carcass to be used for human consumption!!!? What kind of diabolical influence does the beef industry have over the elected representatives of the American people that would permit their greed to outweigh the safety of the goddamn food supply?
People, this is just another example of how we no longer have a representative republic. The real power is in the hands of the corporations and other powerful interest groups who have purchased your representatives and their votes. remember this the next time your child puts a hamburger in his mouth. And remember it in the voting booth, if that still has any meaning at all. I fear all is lost. We have become the servants and our representatives have become our masters. Remember what Jefferson said about the right of the People to abolish government when that government has become tyrannical and corrupted against the People.

[moxnix]

this is just another example of how we no longer have a representative republic. The real power is in the hands of the corporations and other powerful interest groups who have purchased your representatives and their votes.

I have been saying this for years. It is the golden rule, ie: "He who has the gold rules."

[KissCool]

Hum...Well. It's no luck for you, but it was obliged to happen one day or another.
It's your turn to experiment mad cow paranoia and the incompetency of governments in front of such situations.
Good luck. Don't switch to chicken (we have had a scandal about chicken 6 months after the mad cow "discovering"), don't even try sheep (idem) or fish (re-idem), or....simply don't eat, it will be safer.

I will add that some very recent cases raised the possibility of a trasnmission via blood.

[lumpyporridge]

The saddest thing about this is that it is totally preventable, greed is what has brought this on man (fittingly) Cows are vegetarians. By grinding up dead/waste animals and feeding them to other animals below us on the feed chain, we have propogated this. It is such an unsound and stupid idea it is not even funny. The very small amount of testing done for this in the us assures that if one is found there probably have been many more already. Slaughter houses traditionally have a very poor record for quality control (corruption,greed) there are likely to be many sick cows that have already been served. A person just died of CJD yesterday in Kansas(sp?) i believe. I have seen footage of what this diesease does and it is one of the most shocking and sad things i have ever seen. This also brings about larger questions about genetic modification of the food supply. Should we be messing with powers we don't fully understand and that can have ramifications that are far more complex than we could ever understand?

[nihil]

If you like your steak "blue", "extra rare" or any of these kiche fashionable things.......you get what you deserve?

Wankers!

A 9mil black claw or Glaser .38 safety round to the back of the head is what you really need?

Cook it properly, and you are safe!!!....don't..and you are not!!

The ailment is endemic in cattle stocks...just raises it's head every now and then?

Pork, chicken and so on are just as bad.......COOK them.............please

Cheers

[moxnix]

For MCD and the ascossiated CJD, cooking does not help or prevent.

1. The cause is not actually a living organism but rather a molecule called a "prion"
2. Cooking the meat will NOT destroy the prion, so cooking does not prevent MCD

[lumpyporridge]

Originally posted here by nihil


Cook it properly, and you are safe!!!....don't..and you are not!!

The ailment is endemic in cattle stocks...just raises it's head every now and then?

Pork, chicken and so on are just as bad.......COOK them.............please

Cheers

Cooking the meat (if it did disable prions) is just a bandaid solution. The cure is proper handling of the food supply. CJD-BSE are believed to have started as scrapie, a disease found in sheep. By taking dead sheep parts (brain and such) and feeding it to other animals it has believed to have been given a chance to spread. 50 or so years ago in new guinea there were cases of CJD (they called it staggering disease or something like that then) By the ending of head hunting and the consumption of dead humans in general it went away and has not returned. Some peoples there had a tradition of eating the dead (waste no want not ) They would not eat you if you died of sickness (smart) but they believed that CJD was a curse so they went a head and chowed down to their own demise.
Food poisoning generally is actually very common,(300 CJD cases a year in the us and 1 in 5 people get salmonella,botulism........in a year and quite a few thousand die ~8000-10000) most of it is trumpetted as being your fault for "not cooking the food enough" but really it comes down to $$$ and goverment. Slaughterhouses run there lines very fast cause it is $$ and some goverments are very lax on the amount of fecal contamination allowed (if a us slaughterhouse has meat going to europe they have to slow down and be very careful because fecal contamination is not as accepted in europe) WHAT ABOUT US, the consumers?? , we get the poison/****. Technology and understanding has increased tremendouusly but our responsibility has not in general.
On a positive side note , it is actually safe to eat pork less than well done nowadays (in many industrialized countries) due to the much better standard of hygeine. As the main fear, trichinosis (little worms that grow inside you) is very rare. But god only knows what the pig ate??
more reading -- http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.j...toryID=4047962

[RoadClosed]

Hmm Doctors say you can't get it and others say you can. Some say the prions don't go into meat and stay within the nervous system, others say it does. Every medical and government site I have been too, says the risk is low to an actual probablity on zero. Also the majority of world verterinarians say chances are slim to none that anyone will get infected by this cow.

Personally, it's chicken and fish week for me.

[RoadClosed]

Bush secretly planted an infected cow in canada and smuggled it past inspectors? lol.

[Striek]

Originally posted here by RoadClosed
Bush secretly planted an infected cow in canada and smuggled it past inspectors? lol.

No need. We already have mad cow disease here. We have for years. Funny how it never scared us all that much. But of course, leave it to good old Anerican media to try to scare their public into watching thier shows to get better ratings.

In case you haven;t realized, you are not the first people to have to deal with it. New Zealand had it, Australia had it, The United Kingdom had it, nearly all of Western Europe had it. But since your media never covers anything that doesn't concern you, a lot of you won't knopw that. For all the cases of mad cow disease I have seen, I have not seen one report of a human becoming infected by a cow.

Stop blaming this on your government or your feed factories or the food supply or the poor or the rich or the coloured. **** HAPPENS! Get over it. Sure, the government can spend more on meat inspections, but what are you willing to sacrifice to get it? A 20% increase in the price of beef perhaps? That would be essentially pointless when your chance of infections is near zero. The money would be far better spent on health care where it would save far more lives. You have nothing to worry about anyway. If our meat is safe, so is yours.