Well if you consider what it is and how it works it is an absolute nightmare. It is all the National Beef Association can do to keep consumers informed, watch for BSE cows and prevent their ranchers from going broke due to a mass media hysteria scare. Mad Cow has scared the nation because of the issues, which occurred in the UK and recently when some BSE cows were found in Canada. If you will recall the news as we watched on our TV sets sheep, cows and other livestock slaughtered to contain the disease. Many liberal groups are using this scare to get you to stop eating beef. http://www.earthsave.org/news/madcow.htm The threat is real, and it can be overcome; by not feeding animals the remains of other animals within their genome type. The practice of chopping up parts of animals not used such as the heads and brains of the same species causes this. It is the same as our species when they practice cannibalism. It is a dumb idea. http://www.stats.org/statswork/blood-2001.htm It would be similar to us eating dead AIDS victims all chopped up and mixed into our food. Even some of the African Cultures believe in eating the dead and this is another way AIDS spreads to the entire village. Of course there are other ways to get mad cow disease from cow to cow, but in Europe this is what caused its rapid spreading originally. We have laws against such practices obviously in the US. But once one cow gets it, it can give it to the rest of the heard fairly easily, remember cows have a double digestive system and eats its first time around processed food. So a whole heard could get it quite easily. It could be tracked in on cow pies debris on shoes, it only takes a little bit you see, many researchers disagree that it can spread this way, but they cannot prove it doesn't either. Yes you cannot worry about everything. BSE as it's called has some interesting characteristics, you may wish to read up on; http://www.aphis.usda.gov/oa/bse/ As you may not realize about 800 million pounds of animals are fed to other animals every day. While this may be a good way to not waste any part of the animal, it can lead to the spread of disease especially if fed to the same species, which we know is a very bad idea. http://www.drday.com/madcow.htm We should not fear BSE or stop eating meat, but we should be informed and as consumer let it be known that we want safe beef in our food supply and we applaud the efforts of our ranchers and expect the utmost care to continue long into the future. Think about it. |
