Farmer Puts USDA Mad Cow Cover-Up in Context of "Big Lies" of Bush Gang

[tiptoe]

A potential future distraction from Plamegate (assuming the facts actually ever manifest):

Wisconsin Organic Farmer Puts USDA Mad Cow Cover-Up in Context of "Big Lies" of Bush Gang
From: THE AGRIBUSINESS EXAMINER, July 19, 2005, Issue #414
Monitoring Corporate Agribusiness From a Public Interest Perspective

COMMENTARY: LIES, COVERUPS HAVE BECOME STANDARD THROUGHOUT BUSH ADMINISTRATION, INCLUDING USDA

JIM GOODMAN, WONEWOC, WISCONSIN: Why should we expect that we would be told the truth? Isn't that a bit antiquated, the concept that the Administration should be honest with us? When FDR gave his fireside chats, people listened and had hope; they felt he was being straight with them, telling it like it like it was. We want to believe our President and his Administration, have we now become accustomed to believing lies? and why are we so happy to do so?

We are now into our fifth year of happily accepting whatever drivel spews forth from the Administration. "I want to be the education President" so we accept No Child Left Behind. "Terrorists hate our freedom" so we get the PATRIOT act. "Iraq has weapons of mass destruction, and I know where they are" so we send our children to kill and die for lies. " The Social Security fund is in danger of insolvency" so we should impoverish our seniors, our disabled and all those less fortunate to the profits of Wall Street?

I am not a teacher (although I have been), nor am I a social scientist, a military tactician or an economist, but I can recognize an ongoing series of lies when I see it. Perhaps we are all so naïve that we believe, or once believed, that the USDA, CDC, FDA and all those governmental regulatory, safety and consumer protection agencies had our best interests at heart. I'm sure at some distant point in the past they did, but that was then, this is now.

Oops, that drug looked pretty good, it was heavily promoted, guess it did cause a lot of heart attacks. Sorry, we sort of ran out of vaccine.

Mad Cow? Not here, safest food supply in the world, those tests were all false positives. False negatives? No way, our testing uses the "gold standard" Well; it wasn't a "gold standard" at all. Late on Friday June 24, the USDA had to admit that their faulty and inadequate testing was responsible for covering up another domestic case of Mad Cow, for the past seven months.
--Full article--

Other recent Mad Cow news: Blood Donors Warned Over Human Mad Cow Disease -About 100 UK blood donors are being warned they may have vCJD - July 20, 2005

[Oversea Visitor]

1. What do you expect

Feeding bad food to soldiers is ok too.
Feeding bad beef to Americans people also ok I guess.

After all it is profitable.

[tiptoe]

3. ref: "KBR Served Spoiled/Expired Food to Troops" - Sen Byron Dorgan

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x3989409

[Oversea Visitor]

4. Hmmm

tiptoe fast hey :hug: Welcome to DU Home peasants with Mighty Pen

[Maddy McCall]

2. Recommending this one for greatest page.

I'd like to shake Jim's hand.

Welcome to DU, tiptoe. :toast:

[ChiDem]

5. Never touch beef or pork

I also believe they are lying

[WhoWantsToBeOccupied]

6. What's wrong with pork? Hadn't heard that one.

I haven't eaten beef in years (but I ate tons for a year when I lived in England while the problem was raging but unknown there, so I may be a time bomb). Hadn't heard pork may be a problem.

[htuttle]

7. Prion diseases have been found in most mammals

When Mad Cow hit the headlines in the UK years ago, they found many species in the London Zoo had gotten variants of 'mad cow' (aka prion related disease) from their feed.

To the best of my knowledge, it's never been found in either poultry or fish. This could be because their brains are sufficiently different to prevent the prions from replicating (ie., 'transforming' normal proteins) and forming chains, or it could just be they don't live long enough to show symptoms of the disease.

In any case, short of giving up meat altogether, sticking to fish and poultry is probably the next best thing for now.

[FlaGranny]

8. Yeah, but

cook your poultry well (Salmonella), and watch the mercury in the fish.

[htuttle]

9. I'm getting to the point

...where if it's not possible to meet the person who grew the food, I won't eat it.

This is only possible because I live somewhere like Wisconsin, of course, but I think that if someone can favor food grown or raised nearby, they should -- for many reasons. It doesn't guarantee anything, but makes it somewhat less likely that it's tainted with an industrial disease of some kind.

[Catchawave]

10. Many more articles here:

http://www.organicconsumers.org/madcow.htm

It's really sad our government tends to put profits ahead of human food safety. :cry:

[acmejack]

11. Lower class Americans are expendable

but profits are irreplaceable. It is a simple matter of priorities, no one ever got rich treating people like people.

[earth mom]

12. I don't believe *Co either. They lie and lie and lie...

To protect their own asses and keep their corporate masters happy. How about how they try and shove it down everyones throat that children with Autism haven't been poisoned by mercury in vaccinations? It's pretty much the same thing. Who cares if people die from tainted beef?! Who cares if children are poisoned by mercury found in vaccinations?! Another day, another dollar is the ONLY thing these bastards care about! :grr:

[Nothing Without Hope]

13. It IS one of the big lies, and a scandal to turn the stomach of anyone

who is even slightly human in their soul.

In view of the primitive simplicity of their minds they more easily fall a victim to a big lie than to a little one, since they themselves lie in little things, but would be ashamed of lies that were too big.

Such a falsehood will never enter their heads and they will not be able to believe in the possibility of such monstrous effrontery and infamous misrepresentation in others; yes, even when enlightened on the subject, they will long doubt and waver, and continue to accept at least one of these causes as true.

Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, part I chapter X

[prairierose]

14. I've known for years that we "don't have mad cow here" ...

because they haven't been testing for it. It's very easy to say that it doesn't exist here if you don't test for it.

USDA is NOT your friend and they are not the friend of farmers either....only large agribusiness corps can call USDA their friend.