Mad Cow Disease Found in Oregon: Is Anyone Eating Less Beef?
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If You're Eating More Meat Be Informed about Mad Cow

Finding Mad Cow in Oregon puts a new wrinkle in the high protein diet, doesn't it? What's a person to do that wants to eat more meat, not less?

Are you Eating Less Meat Due to Mad Cow Disease?

Not the people I've spoken with. Most are saying, "Yipee, beef's on sale!" The food industry has done a great job of convincing us they are providing a safe food supply and we've been lulled into a false sense of security. Nothing could be further from the truth.

In July 1988, a ban was introduced in the UK which prohibited the use of the remains of sheep in cattle feed. BSE is thought to have spread to cattle from feed including meat and bone meal made from sheep suffering from a similar brain disease, called scrapie.

Ban Not Properly Enforced

Unfortunately the ban was not enforced properly for many years and remained a paper exercise (exactly as it has been in the US ever since).

Francis Anthony, a Herefordshire veterinary surgeon, and the British Veterinary Association's spokesman on BSE said, "If the ban had been enforced properly from the start, I have no hesitation in saying categorically that we should be seeing only a few cases today. But that contaminated feed was being given to animals until at least 1995, and possibly a year later."

The false sense of security for us in the US came from it being widely reported that the practice had been banned. They failed to make it clear that this was a "voluntary ban." Even I falsly believed they had long ago ended this practice until the recent news reports that it is still being done. Despite there being a clear connection between feeding rendered animals to animals causing Mad Cow disease, the meat and dairy industry continues the practice to this day. Why? Corporate greed, plain and simple. It is a cheap source of "protein" and makes cows and other animals fatten faster. A fatter animals weighs more, and they are sold by weight.

I have no doubt that people in the US aren't getting excited about the threat or beginning to avoid beef simply because no people have been reported with the disease. After all, this was a sick cow, not a human. Hence, people do not consider it a direct threat. Amazingly they don't consider those with CJD (Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease) a varient of Mad Cow as being related when clearly it is.

The Costs of Clean Meat Supply

The meat and dairy industry will now begin a campaign to make the higher cost of clean meat seem a ridiculous indulgence rather than a possibly life saving measure. It does cost more to have a clean food supply. I and my family are worth it, are you and yours?

For excellent reference materials read Fast Food Nation (links open in new window) by Eric Schlosser, The Crazy Makers by Carol Simontacchi, and Mad Cowboy: Plain Truth from the Cattle Rancher who Won't Eat Meat by Howard F. Lyman. Be informed then make the choice for you and your family.

Food politics aside, I'm interested in my and my families health and well being, and I'm not interested in supporting an industry that doesn't care about the quality of their products or whether those products are potentially dangerous or even deadly.

What You Can Do to Avoid Dangerous Meat

1. Buy all your meat from the local butcher. He gets the animals from local farmers, and can tell you which Farms, if you ask.
2. Buy all your meat from local stores that certify it is grain fed. See below for link to EatWild.com
3. Cut back on your consumption of all meat in general, substituting beans for instance for protein.
4. Eat a "special occasion" steak at the best restaurants such as Ruth Chris' Steak House. Now that's a steak!

More Info on Mad Cow and it's Variant CJD

MadCow.org: Everything you ever wanted to know about Mad Cow.

Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease Foundation, Inc. : An organization for those with CJD (the human variant of Mad Cow)

Mad Cow Facts

Resources for a Clean Food Supply

The Meatrix - this movie is taking the world by storm, and it's a hoot:

Eat wild: Find local farms in your area. It's fun to go out to the farm - if you have a freezer, you can usually buy half or a quarter animal, or split one with your family. The meat's fresher, cleaner, and tastier too.

Natural Living Warehouse: Free to join. Order in bulk, but they let you request "splits" where someone else also wants the same thing, you can split your orders. Save money, have fun, better quality, etc.

By Kathryn Martyn, M.NLP