Mega Farms, GMO Crops; A Link To Mad Cows?

The latest on-line edition of the Idaho Observer offers an interesting suggestion by one UK organic beef farmer that large factory farms and genetically modified crops, filled with chemicals and crossed with the genes of other plants and even animals, may be linked to the real cause of the dreaded Mad Cow Disease.

The story looks at the work of Mark Purdey who believes extreme environmental conditions and especially exposure to a copper deficient food chain and rogue radioactive metal pollutants causes the natural prion protein in the brain to become malformed.

Purdey, who presents his case on his own web site at http://www.markpurdey.com, says he has traveled the world, testing the total environmental conditions surrounding outbreaks of Mad Cow, Creutzfeldt Jacob, scrapie, multiple sclerosis, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, alzheimers, myalgic encephalomyelitis and a variety of other brain diseases in animals and humans.

He said he spent about 20 years searching for a common factor that might be linked to the cause of these deadly and incurable diseases.

Not only is Mad Cow Disease found to be linked to a lack of copper, Purdey writes that other environmental factors (possibly including electromagnetic radiation, or invisible light, telephone, television and HAARP sound waves) may be indirectly causing break downs in the way the brain functions.

Purdey writes about the copper link: "The normal prion protein actually binds up with copper in the healthy brain, where this metal performs a role in the conducting of incoming electromagnetic energy along the circadian circuits in order to regulate various essential physiological processes under daylight/darkness control.

"Once the problem of copper deficiency surfaces via the food chain, then the prion protein is unable to find its normal copper co-partner and is rendered susceptible to binding up with certain rogue 'foreign' metals that serve as undesirable substitutes at the protein's vacant copper bonds.

"My studies have shown that TSEs will develop in environments where metals such as manganese and silver are at high level as a result of various natural or artificial sources of pollution. These can get taken up into the animal via contaminated foods or atmospheres, and, under certain circumstances, can flood past the blood/brain barrier where they are free to bind onto any copper depleted prion proteins," Purdey writes.

The Observer story said Purdey got involved in Mad Cow research in 1982 when he protested a requirement by the British government that all of the nation's cattle be treated with Phosmet, a powerful insecticide designed to go through the animal's skin and make its system toxic to the warble fly.

The story said Phosmet contains "organophosphates," a poisonous nerve agent.

Purdey was an organic farmer and he took the issue to court. It took him two years to win his right to not spray the chemical on his herds. That was in 1984. The very next year Mad Cow disease broke out in England. Purdey believed then, and he still believes there is a direct link between the insecticide and the Mad Cow outbreak.

He says his own untreated cattle, and the cattle of other organic farmers, were not affected by the disease, even though they, like the rest of the herds in the UK, were fed some meat and bone meal. He said a few cattle developed Mad Cow disease but they were all animals he bought from conventional farms. He suggests they were treated by Phosmet before they arrived.

During his research, Purdey found that:

--Mad Cow Disease, its human form CJD, and cronic wasting disease among deer were all occurring in clusters all over the world. He reasoned that if caused by eating ground up meat and bone meal of other animals the disease should be occurring at random over broad areas and not in small clustered areas.

--The British exported large amounts of meat and bone meal to India, South Africa and Saudi Arabia where cattle were not developing Mad Cow disease.

--Antelope in the London Zoo came down with Mad Cow disease even though they were never fed the ground up animal parts.

--In areas where Mad Cow disease was occurring, Purdey found that there was an abnormally high level of manganese, either in the soil or from nearby industrial pollution. He also discovered that men who worked in manganese mines frequently developed "manganese madness," with symptoms that were the same as CJD.

--Purdey also discovered that Alzheimers Disease, with symptoms similar to CJD, is found to be linked to mental toxicity from aluminum and mercury.

--Another common factor in Mad Cow Disease cluster areas was sound or ultraviolet light pollution. Sometimes frequent sonic booms of aircraft passing overhead were common.

The story of kuru, the disease that affected the Fore tribe of cannibals in New Guinea, also was tested by Purdey. He said he traveled to New Guinea and studied the environment of this tribe. He said he found the soil where that tribe lived deficient in copper. He said the tribe also made utensils and cooking pots from manganese-aluminum metal they salvaged from fighter planes that crashed during the World War II. The disease broke out after the war.

Purdey's work as a layman and concerned organic farmer apparently captured the attention of several scientists who have confirmed his findings in the laboratory.

But the research has been costly because it has created political and financial enemies. Purdey's house was destroyed by fire, the lawyer who helped him win his court case against the government, and a veterinarian who helped in the research both died in strange automobile wrecks. Purdey said attempts have been made to slander and discredit him morally and professionally.

The powerful chemical and agri-industries stand to make billions from pesticide sales to farmers around the world and they are concerned about how Purdey's findings will affect them.

But there may be even deeper implications.

Purdey also suggests a link to corporate farming, the Observer story said. Large multinational corporations are building mega factory farms, raising thousands of cattle, chickens and hogs on one site, and feeding these animals with genetically engineered grains treated with chemical pesticides and fertilizers. They also are raising GMO vegetables, fruit and legumes not only treated but modified with chemicals in the plants.

"If word got out that global madness through mutated prions was linked to genetically engineered crops treated with Ops, multinational corporate agribusiness would suffer a public relations disaster from which it may never recover," the Observer story said.

"Since there is no science to support the mass slaughter of infected animals, it is logical to suspect that public fear of eating contaminated meat or is nurtured in the press to justify government slaughter programs. Rather than exterminating the rogue prions, government slaughter programs are helping to exterminate agribusiness competition, the family farmer," the story concluded.