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chocoholic
Citizen
Username: Shrink
Post Number: 68
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Monday, January 5, 2004 - 4:54 pm: |     |
Is any body planning to cut down or eliminate their beef intake after hearing about the recent reports about Mad Cow disease in US herds? |
Nohero
Citizen
Username: Nohero
Post Number: 2644
Registered: 10-1999
| | Posted on Monday, January 5, 2004 - 5:08 pm: | |
Nope.
If anyone is that concerned about it, just be careful of what you eat. "Mad cow" is transmitted through brain or spinal material from the cow. If you stay away from any "mystery meat" products (such as frozen boxed hamburgers), you should be okay. For example, this past weekend I purchased a whole piece of beef round, and cut it up myself to make chili. I also made some Steak au poivre (sp?) with some nice filets.
I will keep you advised if any symptoms appear.
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greeneyes
Citizen
Username: Greeneyes
Post Number: 448
Registered: 8-2001
| | Posted on Monday, January 5, 2004 - 7:30 pm: | |
My hubby, the classic " A meal isn't a meal without MEAT" man did not purchase any beef on our trip to ShopRite an hour ago. I was shocked. I have been trying to get him to cut back on his beef consumption for years. Thanks Mad Cow! |
Crazyguggenheim
Citizen
Username: Crazyguggenheim
Post Number: 487
Registered: 2-2002
| | Posted on Monday, January 5, 2004 - 8:37 pm: | |
Call me crazy, but I'm on Atkins! Moo.
Call me crazy |
jeffl
Citizen
Username: Jeffl
Post Number: 280
Registered: 8-2001
| | Posted on Monday, January 5, 2004 - 8:54 pm: | |
If it looks like Marty Feldman, choose the fish. |
gemini
Citizen
Username: Gemini
Post Number: 249
Registered: 6-2001
| | Posted on Monday, January 5, 2004 - 9:08 pm: | |
Two things:
I understand whole foods has meat from cows that were only fed vegetable products, they advertise as such. Worth a trip. (That would mean no mad cow..)
I also read in the Star Ledger that a t-bone may contain this "spinal material" around the bone. No more knawing (sp?). I personally and unfortunately am turned off by the whole darn thing, and miss my filet. |
eliz
Citizen
Username: Eliz
Post Number: 651
Registered: 5-2001
| | Posted on Monday, January 5, 2004 - 10:12 pm: | |
Buy organic meat and you'll have no worries. |
mem
Citizen
Username: Mem
Post Number: 2535
Registered: 5-2001
| | Posted on Tuesday, January 6, 2004 - 10:42 am: | |
Nah. I spent time in the UK back when mad cow was all the rage, so I probably have it already. Besides, I'll eat anything.
Uuuurp. |
chocoholic
Citizen
Username: Shrink
Post Number: 69
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Tuesday, January 6, 2004 - 11:59 am: | |
I just read in the NYT yesterday that farmers have been selling obviously ill cows to "downers" who take the meat and use machines to strip the carcass, thus contaminating the meat with nervous tissue. They then package the meat into hamburgers, hotdogs and packaged beef products. There was a US consumer group that challenged this practicce to the FDA years ago when mad cow appeared in the UK. They were told that since mad cow had not yet appeared in the US, that they would not ban this practice.
I also read that even now the beef industry is fighting the upcoming regulations tooth and nail.
I think that if I eat any beef, it will definitely be organic only, and even then Iwill not eat it that often. |
SoOrLady
Citizen
Username: Soorlady
Post Number: 239
Registered: 9-2003
| | Posted on Tuesday, January 6, 2004 - 12:45 pm: | |
Made a great bolognese sauce with ground turkey the other night - I think we'll be eating much less beef (even though I already buy only organic) |
Tom Reingold the prissy-pants
Citizen
Username: Noglider
Post Number: 1644
Registered: 1-2003
| | Posted on Tuesday, January 6, 2004 - 3:54 pm: | |
Sounds like the beef industry refuses to buy the equivalent of insurance policies. Not only does this seem unethical, it doesn't seem like sound business practice, which mystefies me.
Tom Reingold
There is nothing
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Lizziecat
Citizen
Username: Lizziecat
Post Number: 122
Registered: 5-2003
| | Posted on Tuesday, January 6, 2004 - 5:21 pm: | |
We don't eat mammals. |
mfpark
Citizen
Username: Mfpark
Post Number: 139
Registered: 9-2001
| | Posted on Wednesday, January 7, 2004 - 8:12 am: | |
Tom:
The beef industry is buying insurance policies--they are self-insuring (and passing the risk on to consumers), on the theory of large numbers and small likelihood of an occurrence. The lunacy of it is that the costs of a safer beef production cycle are far less than the cost of lost business. These morons should take a page from Johnson & Johnson after the Tylenol scare--fess up fast, go overboard to make your product safe, and market the heck out of your safety measures.
Think of the ads: Beef--It's What's Safe for Dinner. Bet even pork, fish, and chicken producers would follow suit or risk losing market share. |
Michaela May
Citizen
Username: Mayquene
Post Number: 23
Registered: 1-2004
| | Posted on Thursday, January 8, 2004 - 5:11 pm: | |
I've heard about T-Bones and spinal meat. Also, keep in mind ground meet could be made from who knows what. Cow BRAINS?!
I read in the Washington Post that you have a better chance of getting hit by lightening while holding the winning Powerball ticket than you do of getting mad cow.
That said, I'm happily a vegetarian. |
flugermongers
Citizen
Username: Flugermongers
Post Number: 129
Registered: 5-2001
| | Posted on Tuesday, January 13, 2004 - 4:17 pm: | |
Michaela, I wonder how they came up with the stats on that one (lightning, powerball)!
I'm a happy veggie too, yay. |
Tom Reingold
Citizen
Username: Noglider
Post Number: 1712
Registered: 1-2003
| | Posted on Tuesday, January 13, 2004 - 4:34 pm: | |
If you're a vegetarian, you never have to clean your oven. And you are far less likely to need deodorant in your arm pits.
Tom Reingold the prissy-pants
There is nothing
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Brett
Citizen
Username: Bmalibashksa
Post Number: 568
Registered: 7-2003
| | Posted on Tuesday, January 13, 2004 - 4:45 pm: | |
Tom, could you elaborate, that is the weirdest thing I’ve ever heard.
Vegetarians never spill things in the oven?
Are you saying I get the “Meat Sweats”?
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flugermongers
Citizen
Username: Flugermongers
Post Number: 131
Registered: 5-2001
| | Posted on Tuesday, January 13, 2004 - 4:46 pm: | |
Eh? I've gotta clean my oven. In fact, I have to clean my oven, stove, microwave and toaster. The other people in my house aren't veggies, but I'm the one who makes the messes
And I guess I'm not that stinky.
Was that a quote from something, Prissypants? |
Tom Reingold
Citizen
Username: Noglider
Post Number: 1715
Registered: 1-2003
| | Posted on Tuesday, January 13, 2004 - 4:51 pm: | |
 I mean if you don't do roasts in the oven, you don't have to scrub the inner walls. Certainly, if you use the stovetop or microwave, you'll have to clean it. I was a non-meat-eater for several years and only used my oven for baking bread. I baked cookies and other things like that occasionally. The oven never got dirty enough to warrant a scrubbing. This was from living in one apartment for 12 years.
The armpit thing is an observation I have shared with others. Must be because of bacteria, but I really don't know about it. These days I eat fowl occasionally but not that often. I still don't need deodorant, but maybe that is because of a genetic disposition. Or maybe my friends and cow-orkers are just polite.
Tom Reingold the prissy-pants
There is nothing
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alia
Citizen
Username: Alia
Post Number: 129
Registered: 5-2001
| | Posted on Wednesday, January 14, 2004 - 11:35 pm: | |
Don't want mad cow - buy kosher meat. A kosher butcher is prohibited from slaughtering any cow that seems unhealthy, the slaughtering process is quicker and more humane, and the after-processing cleaner. Oh, and the meat is tastier having been salted (then rinsed) to remove all blood. |
flugermongers
Citizen
Username: Flugermongers
Post Number: 133
Registered: 5-2001
| | Posted on Thursday, January 15, 2004 - 2:24 pm: | |
you should go see the thread about butchers.. |
viva
Citizen
Username: Viva
Post Number: 341
Registered: 5-2001
| | Posted on Tuesday, January 20, 2004 - 4:12 pm: | |
read the following:
(not the first time I have heard about the connection between Alzheimers and mad cow)
Greens Charge Government Cover-Up of Mad Cow Crisis
Source: Green Party USA
Posted: December 30, 2003
The U.S. government has covered up the extent and causes of mad cow disease and, as a result, the food supply and the health of the American people have been placed in grave danger, the Greens/Green Party USA charges, in a statement released today by the Party's Clearinghouse in Chicago.
The U.S. government has refused to heed the warnings of leading environmental and health activists, and has long been in violation of World Health Organization standards of beef production. "The rest of the world knows this, which is why 29 countries have cancelled importation of U.S. beef, some of them long before this latest incident, and why Europeans would rather pay hefty trade fines than allow U.S. beef to be imported," said Nancy Oden, an organic farmer from Maine and a member of the Green Party USA's National Committee.
The Green Party USA charges that government agencies have been working foot-in-mouth with the beef and pharmaceutical industries, and have lied to the American people about the extent of the threat to human beings from eating contaminated beef.
According to Mitchel Cohen, editor of the Green Party USA's national newspaper, Green Politix, "At the behest of giant pharmaceutical corporations, the government looks the other way as the cattle industry feeds animals so-called 'rendered protein' -- feed made by grinding up hundreds of thousands of dead and often diseased cows, sheep and other animals, their offal, and their blood.
"Animals raised in this way as units of industrial production rather than as sentient beings," Cohen continued, "are also exposed to high levels of herbicides and pesticides, and are regularly injected with untested and genetically engineered growth stimulants, antibiotics, and other chemicals that wreck the animals' existing lives and remain in their carcasses when they're butchered and sold as meat. The possibility of contracting Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (CJD), the human variant of Mad Cow, as well as other serious diseases, is very real. But the government is more interested in persuading the public to continue its mass consumption of meat than in protecting them -- or the animals," Cohen charged.
Cohen noted that independent researchers in England have found a high correlation between the incidence of Mad Cow Disease and exposure to organophosphate pesticides such Malathion and Phosmet, as well as Thalidomide. Farmers were instructed to pour the pesticides directly over the spines of cows to kill the warble fly larvae; the chemicals may also be "recycled" back to previously healthy cattle via the intensive feeding of meat and bone meal. As was the case when independent researchers first made the link between CJD and mad cow, this information is being suppressed at the behest of the pharmaceutical industry.
After an epidemic of Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease deaths in Britain in 1996, the World Health Organization introduced guidelines to reduce the likelihood of Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE -- the formal name for Mad Cow Disease) -- in which cattle developed millions of microscopic holes in their brains, suffered seizures, fell down and died miserable deaths -- from jumping species from cows to humans. But instead of following those recommendations -- limited as they were in that they did not address the pesticide connection to BSE at all -- the beef industry, with the support of the U.S. government, set up a public relations campaign to keep U.S. consumers in the dark.
The Green Party cites three main myths of the industry:
The first myth: U.S. beef is safe because brain and spinal cord tissue (which are said to harbor mad cow) are removed before processing.
The claim is odd to anyone who has ever seen a T-bone steak, which includes a section of the spinal cord that can easily contaminate meat during butchering. U.S. Department of Agriculture reports reveal that as much as 35% ofbeef, hot dogs and sausage samples taken from advanced meat and bone separation machinery are contaminated with ''unacceptable nervous tissues'' that may harbor the contaminants that cause Mad Cow Disease. In addition, concussions created in animals by the use of stunning devices currently used to kill them can force brain tissue into the bloodstream. These practices have been eliminated in the European Union, but continue in the United States.
The second myth: U.S. beef is safe because 20,000 cattle are inspected each year.
The problem is that this represents only a tiny portion of the 100,000 to 1,000,000 annual "downer" cattle. Too sick to stand up, such a cow is "down." Yet, under the Clinton/Gore administration and continued under Bush/Cheney, meat inspectors across the country have been laid off. In Europe, just the opposite has occurred; there, cattle are tested for BSE at a rate nearly 2,000 times greater than in the U.S.
The third myth: U.S. beef is safe because the U.S. halted feeding rendered meat to cows.
Actually, the Clinton/Gore administration allowed Congressional negotiating committees from industrial cattle-raising areas to overturn attempts to ban the rendering of all animal parts into feed. It is consequently still legal to manufacture animal feed from ground-up cattle, potentially contaminated deer and elk, and feed it to pigs and chickens; the industry then grinds up these animals, along with "chicken litter," blood, and offal, and feeds the mixture to cattle.
According to St. Louis Green Party organizer Don Fitz, the U.S. cattle industry would prefer that these secrets not reach the light of day lest consumers, in disgust, refuse to purchase beef. "The most shocking practice," Fitz reports, "is that the industry suckles calves with blood rather than milk. Many dairies separate calves from their mothers and wean them on the brownish 'milk replacer' made from cattle blood protein. At least 15 published studies show mad cow disease can be transmitted through blood."
As a consequence the human variant of mad cow disease is likely far greater than the 130-155 cases reported in England in 1996. There are currently more than 250 cases of Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease in the U.S. It is also likely that many Alzheimers patients have been misdiagnosed, due to that disease's similarity to CJD.
The danger of mad cow to the nation's 96 million cattle and Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease to humans has increased dramatically under Democratic as well as Republican administrations, which have refused to take the measures necessary to protect the American food supply. The Green Party joins with just about everyone in calling for an increase in the number of USDA inspectors, but that is not enough.
The Greens/Green Party USA calls on the U.S. government to enact a total ban on:
- thalidomide, and applications of organophosphate pesticides such as Malathion and Phosmet;
- synthetic/genetically engineered hormones in animals, and genetically engineered crops;
- the manufacture of animal feed from ALL animal parts, including blood, offal, and animal-based protein substitutes;
- the unhealthy and disease-inducing confinement of animals in industrial-scale production; and,
- the generalized use of antibiotics in animals.
The fact is, the U.S. government has failed take the decisive steps necessary to protect the food supply in the United States, a direct result of both the Democratic as well as the Republican Party's protection of the immediate profits of industries that finance their elections, at the expense of the longer-term interests of farmers and of the health and safety of the American people in general, animals, and the preservation of the natural environment.
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