Mad Cow Disease in U.S.
The day after Memorial Day, after I fed my son a few barbecued hamburgers, with much guilt, I wrote my congressman and both my senators urging them to take a tougher stand against the beef industry and the USDA in regards to Mad Cow Disease/bovine spongiform encephalopathy ("BSE"). Well today, I bring up MSNBC News and see the following headline: Second case of mad cow disease confirmed in U.S.
Legislation needs to be passed that prohibits the use of animal parts in feed and also removes high risk material such as spinal chord, intestines and brain from the food and feed chains. We also need testing on ALL cattle for BSE.
These are the procedures now followed in Europe (those countries in the EU) and Japan to stop the spread of BSE in their respective countries.
It's ironic how our government is so concerned with terrorism and the possible poisoning of our food supply, when the government itself is kowtowing (no pun intended) to the beef industry [lobbyist]. The beef industry is putting the American public at risk by not voluntarily putting in place rules that the rest of the civilized world is following to ensure the health of its people. So it's the job of our elected officials to put those rules in place for them.
Please write your congressman and senators to let them know that you too are concerned about your family's consumption of beef in this country.
http://www.senate.gov
http://www.house.gov
Legislation needs to be passed that prohibits the use of animal parts in feed and also removes high risk material such as spinal chord, intestines and brain from the food and feed chains. We also need testing on ALL cattle for BSE.
These are the procedures now followed in Europe (those countries in the EU) and Japan to stop the spread of BSE in their respective countries.
It's ironic how our government is so concerned with terrorism and the possible poisoning of our food supply, when the government itself is kowtowing (no pun intended) to the beef industry [lobbyist]. The beef industry is putting the American public at risk by not voluntarily putting in place rules that the rest of the civilized world is following to ensure the health of its people. So it's the job of our elected officials to put those rules in place for them.
Please write your congressman and senators to let them know that you too are concerned about your family's consumption of beef in this country.
http://www.senate.gov
http://www.house.gov
posted by cenzosmom at 1:41 PM
2 Comments:
Congress already passed a law in 1996 or 97 that said that farmers weren't allowed to feed their stock food made from other animal parts. What happened with this recent case is that the cow came from another country and was imported before this law was passed.
In the United States and Canada cattle and especially calves are legally fed massive quantities of cattle blood and fat. Dairy calves are routinely weaned on calf starter and calf milk replacer containing cattle blood products such as bovine plasma, bovine serum and bovine red blood cells.
The farcical "firewall feed ban" of 1997 is essentially a PR invention that specifically exempted the feeding of ruminant fat and blood to ruminants, allowing this dangerous practice to continue today. As I reported in Mad Cow USA, it was well established in the mid 1990s that infected blood could spread BSE and other TSE diseases in laboratories. Now, just in the past year and a half, the British government has announced that two humans dead or dying of mad cow disease probably contracted it from British blood products contaminated by donors with human mad cow disease.
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