Mad cow madness: USDA lies and the coming collapse of the U.S. beef industry

[Guest guest]

http://www.newstarget.com/011661.html

 

Friday, September 16, 2005

Mad cow madness: USDA lies and the coming collapse of the U.S. beef

industry

 

 

( Not to mention mad pigs, mad chickens, mad dogs, mad cats, mad people, mad

elk, deer, and much other wildlife now. The real problem is that the US

government sees the problem as simply a public relations problem and could care

less about health.)

 

 

Welcome to Mad Cow Madness! If you've ever wondered what's really

going on with mad cow disease in the United States, here's the real

story. Let's talk about this downer cow that was recently confirmed as

having mad cow disease. It only took... let's see... seven months for

the USDA to confirm that this cow had mad cow disease? Only seven

months! Your taxpayer dollars are hard at work...

 

Here's my opinion of what happened: First, the cow gets mad cow

disease, probably from consuming spinal cord tissue and brain parts of

other dead cows that are typically fed to cattle as part of the

everyday beef operations here in the United States. This was a Texas

cow, born and raised somewhere in the United States, it seems, and

slaughtered in Texas. Turns out it was a downer cow, which means it

couldn't walk. So where do they send this cow? Well, to the pet food

slaughterhouse, of course. That's where many of these diseased cows

end up going -- right into the pet food products for your Fido.

 

If you've ever wondered what's in those cans that you're feeding your

pets, this is the answer -- dead cows that are unfit for human

consumption. And some of them, it appears, have mad cow disease.

Although there's no indication that this particular cow made it into

the pet food supply, I wouldn't be surprised if other diseased cows

frequently get into our pets' food.

 

But, getting back to this particular cow, when it was a downer, the

USDA ordered a test to see if it had mad cow disease. The first test

came back positive. So, of course, the USDA, which has seemingly gone

way out of its way to make sure that no one learns the truth about mad

cow disease in the United States, ordered its own second test, and

gee, what a surprise! The second test came back negative.

 

We see this happening quite frequently -- the second test being

negative. They say, " Well, the first test must have been a false

positive, " and then my theory is that they find some way to distort

the test and falsify the results. Sure enough, the second test comes

back negative -- no mad cow disease. If you test a cow enough times,

you'll eventually get a negative result... especially if you intend

for the results to come out that way.

 

Seeing this testing fiasco unfold, one of the watchdog arms of the

Department of Agriculture decided the agency had better take some

action to protect the integrity of the U.S. beef industry, otherwise

the whole thing could collapse when the truth finally came out about

mad cow disease. So it decided to order a third test of this cow, and

the third test was conducted -- guess where? England. Why? Because

they probably couldn't trust the USDA testers in the United States.

They knew that the test would be falsified again if it were tested in

the United States, so they had to send it out of the country. (That's

how corrupt operations are here in the U.S.) The England test, no

surprise, came back positive.

 

Now, this whole process took seven months -- seven months to find out

that this cow was positive for mad cow disease, during which time the

USDA was proclaiming that U.S. herds were completely safe, explaining,

essentially, " There's no danger. Our testing procedure is highly

accurate, we keep full track of everything and we know where all these

cows are, " and other such nonsense. All this time, of course, the

agency was sitting on a mad cow that still had not been properly tested.

 

Getting cow parts mixed up

It turns out the USDA even had a hard time figuring out where this

particular cow came from. Why is that? I'm going to quote a news story

here. It says, " The cow's type of breed was mislabeled, possibly

because the animal had been heavily soiled with manure and its tissues

were mixed with tissues from other cows. " Wait a minute, here -- wait

a minute!

 

Is this saying they couldn't even identify the breed of this cow

because its tissues were mixed with other tissues? What does that

mean? That the cow parts were all dismembered and put in a giant

barrel, and they were looking at that and trying to figure out if

there was a whole cow there, what breed was it and where it came from?

Please tell me this isn't how the USDA tracks diseased cows...

 

When they went back to the owner of that cow, the owner said he didn't

sell that breed of cow. The USDA then admitted that after the tissues

were processed there was " some mixing. " Mixing? Do they just put all

these dead cows in a big grinder? Some mixing, that's what they say.

And this is supposed to be the highly accurate cattle tracking system

used by the USDA that keeps the public safe, by the way.

 

According to this news story, " Parts from the diseased animals and

four other cows were supposed to be kept in separate waste barrels,

but some of the waste was combined. " So basically, all these cows are

just mixed and matched. When they have a downer cow, they put it into

the grinder, the same as any other downer cow, and then they tell us,

" This cow didn't make it into the food supply. Don't worry. You're

safe, and your pets are safe. None of this is in the food supply!

Don't worry about it! "

 

The other relevant fact here is that cows are moved across the

country. A cow could be born in one state, fed in another state,

weighed in another state and then slaughtered somewhere else. All they

know is that this cow, at some point in its life, was a Texas cow.

They don't know where it came from, and they don't have any evidence

that it came from outside the United States. So this is one of the

first cases in which the U.S. cattle industry can't blame Canada.

 

Keep in mind, the USDA declared this cow to be free of mad cow

disease. They said, " Don't worry, this is safe. " That makes you wonder

-- why didn't they put it into the pet food supply? See, I think they

probably did, and I think they're just telling us whatever they want

us to hear. I think pets are consuming this all across the country

right now. Who knows how many cans of pet food that cow got into with

all the mixing and matching? And remember, you can't kill mad cow

disease by cooking the food. If the prions get into the pet food cans,

it's going to infect the pets, regardless of how well the food has

been cooked.

 

Many countries still ban U.S. beef due to lack of testing

Taiwan, of course, banned the importation of mad cow disease following

the first case of the disease in this country, and then when they

heard about this one, they banned it again, and that drives the U.S.

beef industry nuts. The Agriculture Department says they're talking

with Taiwan authorities " to assure them of the safety of U.S. beef and

that our interlocking safeguards did work as they should have worked

to protect human and animal health. " Oh my -- we have a system that's

ironclad around here! Apparently, we know exactly where the cows

are... that is, except when we mix and match their parts and lose

track of where they came from and can't even figure out what breed

they are.

 

Did you know we have a system of " interlocking safeguards " where we

don't even test all the cattle? ...A system in which the USDA actually

attacks cattle ranchers and beef companies that want to conduct their

own mad cow testing and where the USDA (in my opinion) falsifies these

test results or gets them wrong so frequently that the Inspector

General has to come along and send the results out to another country

to get accurate lab results? This is our system of " interlocking

safeguards " in this country? What a whitewash!

 

I'll tell you what, there is mad cow disease in this country right now

-- I've said it before, and I'll say it again -- there's more mad cow

disease out there, and the USDA is engaged in a massive cover-up. The

agency is whitewashing this issue; they're trying to tell people that

the beef supply is safe, when in fact, there's mad cow disease in

existence right now across this country. And now we have proof of it

with this confirmed mad cow. Finally, the USDA actually has one more

confirmed case of mad cow disease right here from U.S. herds. But of

course, that's no reason for consumers to stop buying beef, we're all

told. Keep eating that cow flesh, folks, and don't worry about mad cow

disease: your government is protecting you.

 

The coming collapse of the U.S. beef industry

The U.S. beef industry is headed for quite a downfall and a global

discrediting when the truth finally comes out about mad cow disease

being prevalent in U.S. herds. I don't think we've even seen the tip

of the iceberg on this issue. There's a lot more mad cow disease out

there in my opinion, based on what I've read and heard from cattle

ranchers. There's a massive cover-up underway, and it's probably going

to take some people dying before the U.S. beef industry has the sense

to mandate mad cow disease testing for all cattle. People are going to

die, and the beef industry is going to be in shambles. They're going

to lose hundreds of millions of dollars.

 

Why? Because they refuse to tell the truth! They refuse to enact

safety standards that other countries now have as routine! They refuse

to test all the cows. The USDA just doesn't want to tell people

anything, it seems. It didn't want to tell them where the cow came

from. There's all this secrecy. You know, if this is supposed to be an

open system of interlocking safeguards, why doesn't the USDA stand up

and tell us the truth? Why doesn't it admit, " Yeah, we need to test

this cow. Let's get it tested. Let's get the truth out there. Let's

tell people everything they need to know -- where it came from, what

ranch it was from, why people are safe and why we're testing all the

cows now. " Why doesn't the USDA do that?

 

How to keep your head buried in the sand

I'll tell you why: they don't want to test the herds in this country,

because if they did mandatory testing across the board, there would

be, in my estimation, thousands of cases of mad cow disease found. I

believe they don't want to do mandatory testing because to do so would

reveal just how prominent this disease is in U.S. cattle. That's my

opinion, and I think that's why they don't want mandatory testing.

 

Think about it -- if there's no mad cow disease in this country at

all, which they claim, then wouldn't it make sense to test all the

cattle and reassure the U.S. market and the world markets that this is

all safe beef? Just test all the cows, and you could reassure

everybody. You would open up new multi-million dollar markets all

around the world that have closed their markets to U.S. beef since the

discovery of mad cow disease. It simply makes good economic sense.

 

Wouldn't the USDA want to open those markets for U.S. cattle ranchers?

Why wouldn't it conduct the testing of all cows to prove that the cows

are safe? The answer, again, is because to conduct this testing would

reveal how widespread mad cow disease really is in this country. And

that's why the USDA has to continue to falsify its own tests, in my

view, to make sure that if a cow ever tests positive, they can falsify

the second test and make sure it comes back negative. That's why they

outlaw independent testing of cows in this country. They won't let

companies run their own mad cow tests. How's that for public safety?

Let me say this again: it is ILLEGAL for a rancher to test his own

cows for this disease.

 

That's so bizarre. It's a safety test -- why wouldn't you want more

companies to run safety tests? Why wouldn't you want more

slaughterhouses having greater safety practices in this country?

Again, the answer is because you don't want these companies

discovering just how much mad cow disease there really is around here.

The USDA, one of the great misguided agencies of modern government,

has given us the Food Guide Pyramid that offers us nutritionally

worthless advice, heavily influenced by private industry, especially

the dairy industry, and now the agency claims to be protecting us from

mad cow disease (but really is just protecting the cattle industry).

 

No surprise there -- a lot of people in high-level positions at the

USDA are from the cattle industry. It's similar to the FDA, where top

officials are ex-drug company executives. It's that old revolving door

between private industry and big government -- serving your interests,

of course!

 

So what's the real story here? The real story is just as I predicted

-- we have mad cow disease in this country, and I think we just have

the tip of the iceberg here. Wait until the truth really comes out

about this -- then you're going to see some mad cow madness hitting

the fan in a very big way. And by that time, nobody will be able to

tell where all the parts came from.

 

Overview:

 

* Mad cow madness: USDA lies and the coming collapse of the U.S.

beef industry

 

Source: http://www.newstarget.com/011661.html