Mad Cow. It's What's For Dinner. Unless you only buy veggie-fed organic!

Dems Will Win

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Sat Dec-27-03 09:58 PM
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Mad Cow. It's What's For Dinner. Unless you only buy veggie-fed organic!

They estimate this will increase the organic beef industry and put the conventional ranchers into the auto-grinder with their now tainted product.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A33187-2003Dec26.html

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Mad Cow Discovery May Push Beef Consumers Toward Buying Organic

By Margaret Webb Pressler
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, December 27, 2003; Page E01

The discovery of mad cow disease in the United States may give a major boost to the organic beef business because cattle raised organically are less exposed to the major risk factor for the deadly wasting disease.

To be certified as being organic by the Agriculture Department, beef cattle must be fed a strictly vegetarian diet, which would prevent them from being exposed to the kind of tainted feed suspected of causing the mad cow disease discovered in Washington state.

Additionally, organic cattle farmers rarely process meat from sick or injured animals, a common practice in the traditional meatpacking business that has been criticized by some food-safety activists. Organic producers also say they don't employ the kind of high-tech, high-pressure meat extraction systems used in traditional meat processing that some critics say can pull tissue from areas where the infection mostly occurs, the spinal column and brain, into the surrounding muscle tissue.

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Don;t believe the lies of the USDA and FDA believe the truth of this article:

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Guidelines
For Mad Cow Disease
A Comparison of North American and European Safeguards
By Michael Greger, M.D.
For the Organic Consumers Association
Updated July 15, 2003
12-26-03

The National Cattlemen's Beef Association describes government and industry efforts to safeguard the American public from mad cow disease as "swift," "decisive" and "aggressive."<1> The US Secretary of Agriculture adds "diligent,"<2> "vigilant" and "strong."<3> The world's authority on these diseases disagrees.

Dr. Stanley Prusiner is the scientist who won the Nobel Prize in Medicine for his discovery of prions, the infectious agents thought to cause bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), or mad cow disease. The word Dr. Prusiner uses to describe the efforts of the U.S. government and the cattle industry is "terrible."<4> What are these "stringent protective measures"<5> that the Cattlemen's Association is talking about, and how do they compare to global standards and internationally recognized guidelines?

In 1996, in response to the revelation that young people in Britain were dying from variant Creutzfeldt Jakob Disease (vCJD), the human equivalent of mad cow disease, the World Health Organization (WHO) issued seven "Recommendations." Numbers 5-7 were observations and/or recommendations for further research. The first four recommendations, however, were concrete proscriptions to reduce the likelihood of mad cow disease spreading to human populations.<6> To this day, the United States government continues to violate each and every one of these four guidelines.

#1. Stop Feeding Infected Animals to Other Animals The number one recommendation of the World Health Organization was that no "part or product" of any animal showing signs of a transmissible spongiform encephalopathy (TSE), or mad cow-like disease, should be fed to any animal.<7> "All countries," the guideline reads, "must ensure the slaughter and safe disposal of TSE- affected animals so that TSE infectivity cannot enter any food chain."<8> Yet, in the U.S., it remains legal to feed deer and elk known to be infected with a transmissible spongiform encephalopathy called chronic wasting disease to livestock such as pigs and chickens.

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Read the Rest:

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