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You are here: Home / More on Mad Cow

More on Mad Cow

by John Cole|  January 2, 20047:29 pm| 10 Comments

This post is in: General Stupidity

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More on the media attempting to stir up hysteria about Mad Cow. Today they breathlessly report that a ‘third herd’ has been quarantined. Oh my god- end of the world. Beef is not safe! Bush sided with agribusiness. Profit over food safety! We are all going to die.

Just to keep this in perspective, let’s review some facts:

1.) One cow has been discovered to have been infected. Compare that to the 183,000 confirmed cases in the United Kingdom.

2.) The cow was slaughtered in a manner in which the dangerous portions of the animal (the spinbal tissue, brain matter, etc.) were separated from the edible portion of the beef. No one is claiming otherwise.

3.) A ‘quarantined’ herd does not mean it is infected- the herds are only being quarantined because they had some animals that were shipped from Canada with the infected animal.

There is simply no need for hysteria, and pretending that the government, the beef industry, the Bush administration, or whoever the scapegoat du jour is somehow failed us is absurd.

Personally, I would have eaten beef tonight if I had not made so damn much pork an sauerkraut yesterday.

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10Comments

  1. 1.

    Stephen

    January 3, 2004 at 1:37 am

    Journalism School, n. A process in which the dangerous portions (brain matter, etc.) are separated from the useful parts of the animal.

  2. 2.

    Mike

    January 3, 2004 at 10:12 am

    So if what you’re saying is true, there’s no rationale for disqualifying blood donors simply because they vacationed in England for 3 months, yes?

    http://209.157.64.200/focus/f-news/1007036/posts

    I’m not saying you’re wrong, but if you mean what you say about the difficulty in spreading the contagion, you should mention you are in favor of lifting the donor ban every time you bring up the topic.

  3. 3.

    GFW

    January 3, 2004 at 4:35 pm

    Do you have a good saurkraut recipe?

  4. 4.

    Michelle

    January 4, 2004 at 5:23 pm

    You’re not wrong about the overblown hysteria right now, but I think you are wrong about the safety of the food supply in general.

    Food service workers are poorly paid, and especially when you reach the level of slaughterhouses, badly treated. That type of treatment doesn’t inspire workers to do their best work–or even to attract qualified competent workers.

    So if you have uneducated and poorly paid workers processing the food supply, it is unsurprising when problems arise.

    If you’re interested in reading more, go to the bottom of this page http://klishis.com/writing/Antibiot.html and work your way through the list of references. Or start with Eric Schlosser’s ‘Fast Food Nation’. He details the entire process from cow to burger, with a huge bibliography, and the fact that he has been sued neither by the beef industry nor by McDonalds may help convince those who are unsure of the veracity of his claims.

    And Happy New Year!

  5. 5.

    Robin Roberts

    January 4, 2004 at 9:39 pm

    Given the precedents of US libel law, not being sued for libel does not attest to the accuracy of a writing.

  6. 6.

    Zach

    January 5, 2004 at 12:53 pm

    Total number of people dead from affects of mad cow disease: 150. It’s a nothing deal.

  7. 7.

    Josh

    January 5, 2004 at 2:42 pm

    Zach: You might want to consider this quote from the director of the Prion Unit at Britain’s Medical Research Council: “[W]e know from the disease kuru, transmitted among the Fore people in Papua New Guinea during cannibalistic feasts with devastating effects, that human prion disease epidemics can span decades with incubation periods that can exceed 40 years, with an average of around 12 years. We also need to think about the effect of the so-called

  8. 8.

    Michelle

    January 6, 2004 at 9:50 am

    Not being sued by the cattle industry and McDonalds, for documenting their hiring practices and their treatment of humans and cattle, is actually pretty amazing. We’re talking about a company (McDonald’s) that will raze a building to the ground rather than allow a union to form.

    Also, there’s a pretty simple solution if you’re worried about BSE etc, and that’s to eat organic meats.

  9. 9.

    Harry

    January 6, 2004 at 10:47 am

    Personally I believe you are more likely to die from suffocation by having your head up your ass as you are from BSE. But hey that’s just one man’s opininon.

  10. 10.

    Mike

    January 6, 2004 at 7:38 pm

    Yeah Harry, Zach, don’t listen to Josh. Come back and drive your point home, by going on record how we should drop the blood ban on anyone who’s ever been to England. Show us how ridiculous we’re being.

    The only way that’ll backfire on you is if a US native comes down with CJD, because that will mean we casually bluffed consumer protection policy where the life of every American blood recipient (as well as everyone who eats beef) was at stake. But that’ll never happen, right? Incubation, schmincubation!

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