One reason "mad cow" will spread unchecked...

[foptiludrop]

... once it gets going:

Beef Banned Under Mad Cow Rules Recalled
By LIBBY QUAID Associated Press Writer

(AP) - WASHINGTON- Beef banned under mad cow disease rules was shipped to wholesalers in a half-dozen states and is now being recalled by a Wisconsin beef plant.

<snip>

Green Bay Dressed Beef of Green Bay, Wis., processed the cow on Aug. 4 and distributed the meat to wholesalers in Pennsylvania, Florida, Illinois, Maryland, Minnesota and Wisconsin. The department and the company are trying to find out how much beef wound up in retail stores, Cohen said.

<snip>

"When it comes to a case like this, the retailer is never disclosed - how are you ever going to know whether your chuck roast was involved in this recall or not?" asked Jean Halloran, director of food policy initiatives at Consumers Union. "The consumer has absolutely no way of knowing."

Entire article (http://news.findlaw.com/ap/o/632/08-23-2005/56e20022e9b23cf8.html)

If you read the entire article, you'll see that this particular incident was deemed very low risk, because the "mad cow rule" that was broken had to do with the age of the cow, rather than its having tested positive for BSE.
Read between the lines, though... some veterinarian signed off on this cow and sent it on its way through the US food chain. ONE PERSON, making a human error -- an error that is only caught weeks later by an auditing entity -- can set in motion a chain of events no amount of "I'm sorry" or suspension-without-pay can undo.
And what if this particular cow *was* infected with BSE? The government's unwillingness to "alarm" the public, along with its inadequate tracking of the retail beef industry will cost the public many lives one day, imo.

[Powerhouse]

Yep. Mad-Cow will get all the meat eaters eventually the way the government is running it.

[Emily]

You can do what we do - raise and slaughter your own. ;)

[foptiludrop]

http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y201/wappened/tofumadcow.gif

[Powerhouse]

Right On, Fop! :1clap:

[foptiludrop]

IMO, Congress needs to investigate the frequency with which people are being diagnosed with (and dying from) Creutzfeldt-Jacob Disease. Any time independent researchers raise flags about 'clusters' of these deaths having been mis-diagnosed as Creutzfeldt-Jacob Disease -- it is variant Creutzfeldt-Jacob Disease that results from eating "mad cow" meat -- they are harrassed by the beef industry, laughed out of county inspectors' offices, and almost wholly ignored by the media. Reports like the one below are typical political bs, with Democrat Harkin seeming to express concern while really just taking a swipe at the Republican-staffed FDA. The report is probably true, just as the FDA's safeguards are probably adequate, in the sense of what can be expected given the SWILL we feed to American cattle; what neither "team" is addressing is that "mad cow disease" *is* here, and has been for quite a while. (And if you think the Beef lobby isn't powerful enough to squelch nearly all mention of "mad cow disease," think back to what it did to billionaire Oprah Winfrey. The Beef Industry silenced one of America's most popular entertainers, so I suppose it's ludicrous to hope that independent investigators will ever be listened to, or even allowed to speak.)


Report Finds Flaws in Mad Cow Disease-Related Testing Program

By Libby Quaid Associated Press Writer

Published: Nov 9, 2005


WASHINGTON (AP) - Government investigators say testing is too slow at times to prevent cattle from eating feed that might be contaminated, just one flaw they cited in a program to help stop mad cow disease from spreading.

Feed safeguards are the most important firewall against mad cow disease, said Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, who sought the report the Government Accountability Office issued Wednesday.

"If FDA's testing program is not catching violations, and catching them in time, that needs to be corrected immediately," Harkin said.

FDA disputed the findings, arguing that the report unfairly focused on a small component of broad government efforts to stop mad cow disease.

The only way mad cow disease is known to spread is through feed containing certain tissue from infected animals. Adding animal protein to feed is commonly done to speed growth, but the U.S. has banned cattle protein in cattle feed since 1997.

Run by the Food and Drug Administration, the feed testing program is a small part of the government's campaign to keep mad cow disease out of the food chain for animals and people.

The program has many weaknesses, according to GAO, the investigative arm of Congress.

In half the feed samples analyzed, FDA took more than a month to determine whether banned cattle protein was present. Cattle feed is eaten quickly after it's manufactured, and the feed may have been consumed before tests are finished, GAO said. The report examined 989 samples analyzed from August 2003 through June.

Investigators said the agency required no documentation of its reviews and that FDA officials were lax in overseeing the testing program.

The FDA said a timeframe for testing is not critical to minimizing cattle's exposure to potentially contaminated feed.

"FDA relies on its overall inspection program, rather than analytical methods alone, to enforce the feed ban," agency officials wrote in a response included in the GAO report. FDA also inspects feed mills and other firms subject to the feed ban.

FDA officials also said existing tests can't tell the difference between banned cattle protein and protein that is allowed. The government does allow blood and restaurant plate waste in cattle feed.

Mad cow disease, the common name for bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or BSE, has been found in more than two dozen countries, including the United States.

Eating meat products contaminated with infected tissue is linked to a rare, fatal illness, variant Creutzfeldt-Jacob Disease, that has killed more than 150 people worldwide. Most of the deaths were in Britain, where there was an outbreak in the 1980s and 1990s. One person died in the United States but was living in Britain during the outbreak.

---

http://ap.tbo.com/ap/breaking/MGBBK2YDTFE.html

[Parklane64]

Here's the truth that the PTB have been keeping from you:

http://www.markpurdey.com/

Read about the current ecological imbalance of ultra violet radiation, manganese, copper, organophosphate chemicals, dioxins, geomagnetism, low frequency infrasound, radar, silver, magnesium molybdenum and many more factors in our modern environment. Discover how these prerequisites interact and combine to bring about some of the mystery free radical based illnesses that blight our modern times, most particularly, BSE.

And:

http://madcow.pamrotella.com/

Somerset farmer Mark Purdey observed that the UK's Mad Cow outbreak immediately followed the government's attempt to eradicate the parasite warble fly from cattle. Most farmers were required to treat their cows' spines and skulls with Phosmet, an organophosphate pesticide. Because Purdey was an organic farmer, he obtained special permission to avoid treating his cattle. He then observed that his neighbors' treated herds went on to contract Mad Cow Disease (BSE), whereas Purdey's untreated herds did not. Purdey also had purchased a non-organic herd which had been treated with Phosmet before he acquired it. That particular herd also went on to develop Mad Cow Disease.

To sum it up, mad cow disease has been caused by pesticide.

[foptiludrop]

Whether it's the perversion of poisoning the soil to make it yield more fruit or the depravity of feeding grazing animals the flesh of their own species doesn't matter at this point, since 'we' are insisting there's no problem to begin with -- or, heh, *if* there is one, 'we' are taking every necessary precaution to minimize its effects. ;)

I'm not familiar with Mr. Purdey's claims, Parklane, but it seems rather odd that, organic or not, his cattle would be able to avoid pesticide pollution, given the commonality of water tables and water sources.