Mad Cow Disease Hits The US: It's Mad To eat Meat.

[Guest guest]

Mad Cow Disease Hits The US. It's Mad To Eat Meat.

 

http://www.peta.org/feat/madcowus/

 

 

If you eat meat, you already have to worry about salmonella, E. coli,

campylobacter, heart disease, strokes, high blood pressure, and cancer, as well

as your weight. Now, add mad cow disease and its chicken, fish, pig, and turkey

variants to the list! That’s right—any animal with a brain might get infected

with the disease. We've already identified mad cow disease variants in humans,

sheep, mink, cows, elk, deer, and cats.

 

Late in the day on December 23, the U.S. government announced that a dairy cow

in Washington state was infected with mad cow disease, also called bovine

spongiform encephalopathy (BSE). Government officials announced that they have a

plan, but it seems to be a public relations plan, not a plan to protect the

public health. Newspapers report that meat from the cow, who was killed December

9, traveled through three processing plants before the problem was discovered 13

days later.

Think switching to chicken will keep your safe? Think again! Click here to learn

why it’s mad to eat any meat.

What Is Mad Cow Disease?Spongy brains, whether in humans, cows, or other

animals, are caused by malformed proteins called prions. Researchers have traced

recent outbreaks of the bovine version of the disease to farmers’ cost-cutting

practice of mixing bits of dead sheep’s neural tissue into the feed of cows, who

are naturally herbivorous.

 

 

If cows eat the brains of other cows who already have BSE or of sheep suffering

from a sheep disease called scrapie, the animals can develop mad cow disease.

When people eat infected animals, thus far presumed to be cows, they could

develop the human version of the disease, new variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease

(nvCJD). Millions of cattle suspected of being infected with BSE in England,

Scotland, Ireland, France, Belgium, Italy, and other countries have been

incinerated, and various safeguards (few of which have been adopted in the U.S.)

have been instituted.

No matter what species it strikes, spongiform encephalopathy is always fatal.

There is no treatment. The disease eats holes in the brain. In humans, it

initially causes memory loss and erratic behavior, and over a period of months,

its victims gradually lose all ability to care for themselves or communicate,

and eventually, they die. So far, more than 120 people in Europe have died from

nvCJD. Doesn’t the government protect the meat supply?

Because the infected cow was raised for dairy production, she had lived long

enough to show symptoms of the disease. Most cows are killed before they turn 2

years old, chickens at 6 to 7 weeks, and pigs and turkeys before they’re 6

months old, long before they could become symptomatic; no one would know whether

they were infected with spongy brain disease, and the U.S. Department of

Agriculture (USDA) is doing nothing at all to try to find out. In fact, the USDA

admits that it only tested about 20,000 cows (and no other animals) for BSE last

year—a statistically insignificant percentage of the approximately 40 million

cows and 10 billion other animals slaughtered annually.

 

The dangerous practice of feeding sheep and even cows to other cows was not

banned in the U.S. and Canada until 1997, and the U.S. government said that as

recently as 2001, there was widespread violation of the feeding regulation. It

is still legal to feed sheep and cows to pigs and chickens and to feed pigs and

chickens to one another and to cows, even though these practices have been

banned in Europe, and cows’ blood continues to be fed to chickens, turkeys, and

other farmed animals. In fact, European countries have instituted an array of

safety precautions that have not yet been adopted in the U.S. to try to protect

their populations from spongy brain diseases. Although the issue of feeding cows

to cows has been of particular concern, the problem is even more severe for

chickens and pigs. In fact, of all the meat and bone meal that is processed into

food for farmed animals, 43 percent is fed to birds, 13 percent is fed to pigs,

and only 10 percent is fed to cows, so any ban on

feeding animal carcasses to cows does not even begin to address the overall

violation of WHO recommendations.

 

Other forms of spongy brain diseases have been found in North America. In May,

an 8-year-old cow on a dairy farm in Alberta, Canada, was found to have BSE. Two

years ago, 200 sheep raised for dairy on a Vermont farm were killed on suspicion

that they were infected with their species’ equivalent of mad cow disease.

Chronic wasting disease, a similar condition, is widespread in deer and elk in

Western Canada and the U.S. and is suspected of infecting hunters who may have

eaten meat from sick animals.

 

Since spongy brains have been found in cats, dogs, sheep, mink, deer, and elk,

as well as in cows and people, you may not be protecting yourself by avoiding

beef alone. When there are so many delicious vegetarian alternatives available

at virtually every restaurant and grocery store, why gamble?

Can You Protect Yourself?

Yes! The best way to protect yourself and your family is to stop eating animal

products and choose a healthy vegan diet. A vegan diet not only protects you

from mad cow disease, but is the most effective way to prevent foodborne

illness, heart disease, strokes, and many other ailments. Click here for a FREE

vegetarian starter kit to help you get started.

 

 

 

Click here to Meet Your Meat! | Click here to view the news release.