December 31, 2003
Meat safety changes? Don't feel safe!
Mad Cow Disease. BSE. variant CJD.
They said it couldn't happen here. They said that our food safety practices were unparalled on the planet. THEY WERE WRONG AND THEY LIED
Now they say that the infected cow was born before the "feed regulation changes." True, but those changes didn't (and won't) stop BSE or its spread.
Now they say that they are changing the regulations again and that we will be safe.
Meat From Infirm Animals Is Banned, Vendantan, Wa. Post, 12/31/03.
Banning Sale of 'Downer' Meat Represents a Change in Policy, Pianin & Gugliotta, Wa. Post, 12/31/03.
WE WON'T BE SAFE
John Stauber has an article at AlterNet (12/30/03) that points to some of the deeper problems with the beef industry Mad Cow USA: The Nightmare Begins. At the root of the problem is that the US (and Canada and Mexico) all feed animals rendered waste from cows - including blood, fat, and tissue. BSE can and does pass through blood - including to and through humans. That is why Britain is importing its blood supply, and why those who have spent time in the UK can't donate blood in the US (or Australia, or a number of other nations).
These rendered products are also feed to other animals (pigs, sheep, chickens, and pet foods). While labels for feed containing rendered beef say that they should not be fed to ruminants, they are regularly fed to poultry. Poultry wast and droppings are regularly included in cattle feed. So that particular control is pointless.
Certainly it helps to ban sick animals from the food chain (about time don't you think?), but that is only visibly ill animals and BSE can be unsymptomatic in cattle for 5 years or more. Meanwhile, blood is regularly used in feed of all types.
The US "mad cow scare" is not just a ticking bomb, it is one that has already exploded - we just don't know how far.
In 1997 Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber wrote an excellent book Mad Cow USA: Could the Nightmare Happen Here? (link to book at this site). While the book itself is out of print, they have made it available for download at PR Watch Book Download (pdf).
I would strongly recommend reading it, and sending a big thank you to Rampton and Stauber at editor@prwatch.org
Posted by rowan at December 31, 2003 11:14 AM | TrackBack | [eMail this article!] |The thing that has really been bothering me is how The Oregonian is treating the issue. They're being very reassuring, if not dismissive. It makes me wonder why they bother to report on it at all (oh, that's right, they have a paper to sell). In particular on 12/29, Don Colburn writes that people mistakenly equate classic CJD with variant CJD -- when really, he argues, they are completely different. Not so. In fact they have very similar symptoms, but classic CJD is more common and reveals itself in older people (55+) and vairiant shows up in twenty-somethings, and is rare (as far as we know). It is claimed that they were discovered independantly and that the official cause of classic CJD is "unknown".
The fact that these forms were discovered independantly is not reason to assume that they have exclusive causes. A and B can both be caused by C. Given the stunning correlations, how can they tell us that we need only mind the rarer variant disease?
I think it is criminal to tell people that they have little to worry about. Corporations need to be held responsible for the lives that they have taken, and surely have yet to take. The "nothing is zero-risk" defense does not cut it. To charge the National Meat Association with manslaughter would be charitable.
Posted by: erika at January 2, 2004 8:39 PMThe current news clips showing "downer cows" breaks my heart and I turn my head away as I can not bear the thought of suffering, even in animals. Little did I know the news stories of 1977, highlighting the beef industries' need to pump chemicals into their stock to "fatten them up for market" (that turned me into a vegetarian) that I would again in my lifetime be hearing and reading such lame stories again and that would in fact just re-enforces that decision......and how smug the US media response was to the Brits identical issue. Apparently, what goes around does come around...even for the mighty US
Posted by: Christine at January 3, 2004 7:50 PM