this mad cow thing

Uh........slow down there. Unless your Dentist is removing teeth in the brain of his patients,you have nothing to worry about, since that is where the disease is. Also any surgical instruments that have been used in brain surgery of an infected patient are the ones to spread the disease, so if you elect to have brain surgery,demand brand new instruments to be used (of course once your out on the operating table, there's no saying what is used).

Can we stop the hysteria?

 

I have been reading a lot on it. It can be spread through blood and milk. How do you think baby cows get it from thier mothers? Same as AIDS babies. This is going to be the next AIDS only the government won't admit it because it will ruin the economy. :no: British govt. did the same thing.

 

Babies have gotten Aids from their mother through invetro ( you know while still in her stomach not yet born yet? Living off the mother for nourishment.) The sky is not falling.

At one point people thought if you said hello to someone that had cancer, you got it.

Slow down!~

 

CraftyDiva, you must be a cattle producer.

People have every right to wonder if what they are eating and feeding their families is safe.

It isn't like the government spin doctors haven't lied to us before.

The Chronic Wasting Disease in deer and elk did start from them eating cattle feed. From what I read while living in Estes Park, Colorado in the mid 90's it started in Greeley. It was in the newspapers back then (obviously before they knew how bad it would get) The Division of Wildlife would come out and say that is where the deer got it. They also said it wouldn't hurt you if you were a hunter and killed and ate one of them. Well in the years since then there has been a number of hunters die from BSE. Now the DOW wants you to turn in the head so they can test it before you eat any of the meat.

Is that what is going to happen with beef in a few years..people start dying from it and the government says....oh, I guess we were wrong?

 

Where in the world are you people getting your information - from The Star and other newsstand "if there is no news, simply make it up" tabloids? I am a cattle farmer. I have followed MCD and related subjects since it came up in England. I have yet to see any information such as the wild claims above.

Go back and read the F&S article. It did not say two our of nine deer/elk have their species version of MCD - called Chronic Wasting Disease. It said it was showing up and there wasn't conclusive evidence of the reason for it. IMBO, it isn't coming from cattle feed - and, by the way, MCD isn't a chronic wasting disease - but rather from animals in the wild eating the spine of carcasses they find. And, yes, deer and elk will chew on bones and antlers for the calcium in them.

There is absolutely no, repeat no, evidence it can be passed in milk or even in meat from an infected animal. It is only when brain or spinal tissue from an infected animal contaminates the meat it becomes infected also. Don't eat the brain, cut along both sides of the spine, rather than through it, and you are extremely, extremely likely to get anything like vCJD or chronic wasting disease from it.

Unless surgury is being done on the brain or spinal column there is no change of exposure. I doubt either of those are done in doctor or dentist offices. And, yes, such surgury now requires single usage instruments.

There has been one case where a blood donation is suspect; however, it could also be a coincidence since both lived in England during the MCD outbreak and both ate beef during that time.

It is though something like 60M Britians ate beef exposed to MCD, yet only about 1,500 have come down with vCJD in about the last eight years. Heck, in the U.S. about 30,000 people die each year from the flu or complications thereof.

vCJD is the human equivalent of MCD. CJD is a naturally occuring disease in humans at the rate of about 1/1M. Figure the U.S. population at 300M, with a 5% death rate, or about 15M a year. Thus, one would expect about 15 cases of CJD in the U.S. each year.

You are far more likely to die in an vehicle wreck on the way to buy beef than to die of exposure to MCD even if the animal did have it when it died.

I have absolutely no plans to change my beef eating habits.

Please stop spreading those "I heard..." rumors.

Ken S. in WC TN

 

Welcome to the board little mom. Hearing the far out rantings of an obvious paranoid loonie tickles my funny bone to no end.
2 out of 9 deer have "mad deer" disease.

Keep em coming. I'm rolling on the floor laughing.

 

little mom, you have more to fear from mad muslims than mad cows.

 

little mom~ I can understand your concern and respect your right to have an opinion but I have to say from reading your post that you seem to be just who the media is pandering to.

And yes, my husband and I are beef producers. Tonight's dinner was lasanga made with beef bought from the store.

 

Ross, where do you get that the US has a better screening than Europe does? In the last 10 years the Usda has tested 2% of downer cows in the USA. In Japan every cow is tested and in Europe 100% of adult downer cows are tested. I'm getting my info from this site
http://www.organicconsumers.org/madcow/GregerBSE.cfm

it has a wealth of information, much of it seeming to be "no spin". Where is everyone else getting their info from?

Carol K

 

If our testing and controls were so much better then why did the US send the tissue samples to England for confirmation of Mad Cow disease? It's been on all of the news stations and even the Ag Secretary talked about waiting for a positive confirmation from England.
One would think the US would have the facilities and technology to do our own testing and confirmations after watching the disaster the Mad Cow Disease wreaked on the UK.
I guess we're not the 'best & brightest' at everything after all!

 

Carol and KY: I'd venture a guess TYSON'S et al have something to do with the failure to do more testing here. :no: Anyone who has ever had to smell one of their factory farms would know why. :vomitingwretchingandpuking:

Blegh. :no: :no: :no:

 

Where the hell is that goat and the spider webs at? I want to see a pic of that. What state was it supposed to be from or planet????? or country???

 

I love goats but hate spiders!! I want to see it too. That would be a mess in the barn wouldn't it?? :haha:

I do know that in Arkansaw,WI they were doing some test plots of genetically modified potatoes with insect DNA but I've never heard of goats & spiders.

 

Ken, you have said a few times that eating muscle meat is the way to go. You may want to read this
http://www.organicconsumers.org/madcow/Greger122403.cfm


Carol K

 

I found the link about spider/goat genetic modification. There's a bunch but here's the first one.
http://www.planetsave.com/ViewStory.asp?ID=2002

Just do a google search of goat+spider+genetic+modification and you'll bring up a long list of sites.
Doesn't look like the goats are spinning webs in the barn though, that sounds more like an Enquirer or Globe story.
It's bad enough without embellishing it!

 

I'm all for keeping the information accurate, but consumers do, it seems, have cause for concern. Whenever I hear governmental officials saying they are "absolutely certain" that something is safe when it's clear that they don't know anything of the sort, I become especially skeptical. Whether or not this disease is likely to be spread to humans, I don't want to be eating it. It's no less than an outrage, in my opinion, what's going on in the agricultural industry and the fact that the FDA has simply been turning a blind eye to it. It doesn't take a brain surgeon to know that it's bad public health to send a diseased animal to the packer, or to reduce animal remains to feed--regardless of whether we have data on the incidence of resulting human disease. And when we DO have the data, it's often simply ignored--a case in point being the prevalent overuse of antibiotics in livestock, which, together with equally irresponsible practices in doctors' offices, has rendered environmental bacteria largely resistant to all but the most potent and dangerous of antibiotics. My point is that I don't need to wait for the epidemiologic studies to tell me that I don't want to be eating what's coming out of the animal mills these days. I'm not a hysteric, but I will be looking more closely now at where my meat is coming from.

 

Here are some websites that littlemom might enjoy....

http://www.coasttocoastam.com/

http://www.interstellar-probes.org/

http://www.monmouth.com/~bcornet/sow.htm

http://www.carnicom.com/contrails.htm