|
OUR FATAL FOOD (Mad cow disease) It is a disease no one has ever survived. It may take as long as twenty years after initial exposure to manifest itself. It perforates the brain with holes the size of dimes. It is caused by a unique protein called a prion. Prions are almost indestructible and can survive disinfectants and high temperatures. Some pathologists have refused to do autopsies on victims of the disease, because of the high risk of contracting it. Those pathologists who do examine deceased victims of this disease wear space-age anti-contamination suits. The disease is spreading globally. It can be largely prevented --because the principal cause is known-- but it isn't because it would impact negatively on the multi-billion dollar cattle industry. When cattle are diagnosed with the disease it is called Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE) or Mad Cow Disease. When people get it, it is called Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (CJD). Cows in various parts of the world, including North America, are given feed that contains animal parts, which may include BSE prions. Research has shown that human consumption of BSE-contaminated meat can cause CJD. It is yet another example of corporate wealth superseding public health in importance. Here are the facts and their sources: Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE) attacks the central nervous system with a proteinaceous infectious agent known as a prion. In humans prions can cause Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease or CJD, a fatal illness characterized by progressive dementia and seizures. The fact that the cattle industry uses dead animals as feed and the government allows it, proves neither can be trusted when it comes to protecting public health. It is estimated that 14 per cent of all cattle in the US are given this so-called "bypass protein" in their feed. Prions are not only in the meat of BSE-infected animals, but also in animal byproducts such as bone meal. CJD can be transmitted from human to human through blood transfusions and blood-based vaccines. To any intelligent human being, feeding diseased animals to herbivorous animals is the height of lunacy, but to the cattle industry it makes financial sense to feed dead cows to live ones, because while it increases the risk of CJD in humans, it decreases the cost of animal feed and boosts profits! Source: The Cancer Conspiracy: http://members.shaw.ca/cancerconspiracy One can imagine what an industry that risks public health for the sake of profit will stoop to in the production of pet food....When a cow is slaughtered, about half of it is not eaten by humans: the intestines and their contents, the head, hooves, and horns, as well as bones and blood. These are dumped into giant grinders and mixers at rendering plants, as are the entire bodies of cows and other animals known to be diseased. Rendering is a $2.4 billion-a-year industry in the US alone and processes some forty billion pounds of dead animals a year. There is simply no such thing in America as an animal too ravaged by disease, too cancerous, or too putrid to be welcomed by the embracing arms of the renderer. Another staple of the renderer's diet, in addition to farm animals, is euthanized pets —the six or seven million dogs and cats that are killed in animal shelters every year. Added to the blend are the euthanized catch of animal control agencies and road kill. When the gruesome mix is ground and steam-cooked, the lighter, fatty material floating to the top gets refined for use in such products as cosmetics, lubricants, soaps, candles and waxes. The heavier protein material is dried and pulverized into
a brown powder —about a quarter of which consists of fecal
material. The powder is used as an additive to almost all pet
food as well as to livestock feed. Farmers call it "protein
concentrates." In 1995, five million tons of processed slaughterhouse
leftovers were sold for animal feed in the United States. In
August 1997, in response to growing concern about the spread
of Mad Cow disease, the FDA issued a new regulation that bans
the feeding of ruminant protein (protein from cud-chewing animals)
to ruminants; therefore, to the extent that the regulation is
actually enforced, cattle are no longer quite the cannibals that
we had made them into. In Arkansas, for example, the average farm feeds over fifty tons of chicken litter to cattle every year. One Arkansas cattle farmer was quoted in US News & World Report as having recently purchased 745 tons of litter collected from the floors of local chicken-raising operations. After mixing it with small amounts of soybean bran, he then feeds it to his eight hundred head of cattle, making them, in his words "fat as butter balls." He explained, "If I didn't have chicken litter, I'd have to sell half my herd. Other feeds are too expensive." We don't know all there is to know about the extent to which the consumption of diseased or unhealthy animals causes diseases in humans, but we do know that some diseases— rabies, for example— are transmitted from the host animal to humans. We know that the common food poisonings brought on by such organisms as the prevalent E. Coli bacteria, which results from fecal contamination of food, causes the death of nine thousand Americans a year and that about 80 per cent of food poisonings come from tainted meat. And now we can also be virtually certain, from the tragedy that has already afflicted Britain, that Mad Cow disease can "jump species" and give rise to a new variant of the always fatal, brain-wasting Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in humans. The foregoing has been excerpted from Howard Lyman's web site: http://www.madcowboy.com/ Get the full story about Mad Cow Disease with Howard Lyman's book The Mad Cowboy. A former cattle rancher himself, Lyman gives you the inside story. The book is published by Scribner Publishing, June '98; 2nd printing Feb. 2000. Available at some Barnes & Noble, Borders & Whole Foods stores, or buy the book on Howard Lyman's web site. For autographed copies send $20 plus $3 postage to: Voice for a Viable Future, 11288 Ventura Blvd., #202A, Studio City, CA 91604. 818-509-1255 RESEARCH FINDINGS A British scientific team says it has strong new evidence that Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease and BSE (Mad-Cow Disease) are likely to be one and the same. They have discovered a critical similarity between the new type of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) which has infected humans, and bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) in cattle. The finding adds powerful backing to claims that BSE has crossed the species barrier between cattle and humans. Many believe that humans may get the disease after eating infected beef. "Most of us felt that the connection was most likely", said Dr. Michael Harrington, an expert on mad cow disease at the California Institute of Technology, "But this gives us much stronger evidence." Billions of pounds of slaughterhouse waste in the form of rendered animal by-products are fed to US livestock every year as fat and protein supplements, despite this practice being the known route of transmission of BSE. In addition, some 40 billion pounds a year of slaughterhouse wastes like blood, bone, and viscera, as well as the remains of millions of euthanized cats and dogs passed along by veterinarians and animal shelters, are rendered annually into livestock feed --in the process turning cattle and hogs, which are natural herbivores, into unwitting carnivores... Animal-feed manufacturers and farmers also have begun using or trying out dehydrated food garbage, fats emptied from restaurant fryers and grease traps, cement-kiln dust, even newsprint and cardboard that are derived from plant cellulose. Researchers in addition have experimented with cattle and hog manure, and human sewage sludge. Under current FDA regulations, animals known to be infected with mad cow-type disease such as deer, elk and sheep, can be legally fed to pigs, chickens and pets, which in turn can be rendered and fed to cows. To trim costs, many farmers add a variety of waste substances to their livestock and poultry feed and no one is making sure they are doing so safely. Cattle feed now contains things like manure and dead cats. Chicken manure in particular, which costs from $15 to $45 a ton in comparison with up to $125 a ton for alfalfa, is increasingly used as feed by cattle farmers despite possible health risks to consumers. Chicken manure often contains campylobacter and salmonella bacteria, which can cause disease in humans, as well as intestinal parasites, veterinary drug residues, and toxic heavy metals such as arsenic, lead, cadmium, and mercury. These bacteria and toxins are passed on to the cattle and can be cycled to humans who eat beef contaminated by feces. A fatal "mad deer" disease called chronic wasting disease is occurring at epidemic levels in deer and elk in Western states and on game farms. This may already be claiming human lives as is suggested by the alarming appearance of unusually young victims of CJD." WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION ISSUES WARNING Meat and animal feed infected with mad cow disease may have been sold across the globe, raising the possibility of outbreaks beyond Europe, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). Dr. Maura Ricketts, a WHO specialist, said it was almost impossible to trace where suspect meat or feed might have gone since mad cow disease was first identified in Britain in 1986. "How food is exchanged across borders isn't very transparent or easy to understand," she told reporters. "Neither is how cattle feed moves around the world." "The incubation period for this is quite lengthy and the disease appears to be a completely unexpected, novel agent," Ricketts said. "We didn't think that it would make human beings ill." Governments were slow to impose bans on the import of meat and bone meal and other potentially risky animal products, and the goods were exported for a long time after the disease was identified, she said. Britain has spent 7.5 billion dollars on containing the disease. If the disease were discovered in a developing country, the economic effects could be even more disastrous, she said. GLOBAL MEAT TRADE POSES GREAT RISKS Mad cow disease may have been spread from Europe to other parts of the world through exports of meat and bone meal as well as livestock, the World Health Organization has warned. "Our concern is that there was sufficient international trade in meat and bone meal and live cattle that there actually has been exposure worldwide already," said Dr. Maura Ricketts of WHO's Animal and Food-related Public Health Risks Division. Some 180,000 cases of BSE have been confirmed in Britain, which first discovered the disease in 1986. In recent months, increasing numbers of cases have cropped up in France and Germany, provoking fears that like Britain, where 87 cases of CJD have been reported, there will be growing numbers of humans infected by the fatal disease. "Meat and bone meal are particularly worrisome," Dr. Ricketts said, because "the recycling agent of BSE is inside cattle feed." Only in recent years have developing countries, which used to feed cattle on grass, been able to afford protein supplements such as meal, she noted. Britain exported its feed primarily to France, Germany, Denmark and Switzerland in Europe. It also exported to Dubai and other Mideast and African countries, food safety experts say. Of the three million tons of bone meal produced by the European Union, an estimated 500,000 tons has been exported, mostly to Eastern Europe, Asia and the United States. Dr. Ricketts declined to specify countries at risk on grounds it could provoke a consumer panic and economic upheaval. But the Campaign for Food Safety, a Minnesota-based national network funded by individuals and foundations interested in organic food, said the United States leads the world in "feeding animals to animals." "Countries with rendering industries are at greater danger of having contaminated their food supply," Dr. Ricketts said. "The risks are raised if they recycle it and introduce it into their own cattle population," she added. But many countries that do not have a formal rendering industry have "backyard industries where animal tissue and organs are transformed," she pointed out. SEE ALSO: http://mad-cow.org |