The Mad Cow Coverup
If the United States Department of Agriculture was backed
into announcing that one Holstein cow in Washington State was
infected with Mad Cow Disease, then the situation must be getting very bad.
USDA Secretary Ann M. Veneman disclosed Dec. 23 that a
dairy cow slaughtered Dec. 9 (2003) near Mabton tested positive for Mad Cow disease. The farm was quarantined but the meat from the
diseased cow is believed to have gone to market.
Stories were leaking Wednesday that the cow was tested
because it was "a downer," which means it was a milking cow that kept falling, a symptom of Mad Cow Disease. Because it was
sick, the stories said, the meat was marked for use as dog food and not human consumption.
How can we be assured of that story? And why would
anybody want to give infected meat to our pets? What assurances do we have that our beef in the U. S. is safe?
The USDA claims it tests about 20,000 cows a year for the disease, yet United Press International says the agency refuses to provide
documentation upon request to prove it. UPI said it has been asking for this information since July.
UPI claims that former USDA veterinarians say they have long suspected that Mad Cow is in the U.S. herds and there may be other infected animals.
I believe the U. S. government and the powerful beef industry have been covering up the presence
of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) in this country for years. The disease is now infecting livestock throughout Europe, Japan and South America.
It has been infecting the wild herds of elk and deer in the United States.
It is known to infect wild cats and other zoo animals, including birds that ate infected meat. And we all know that the disease
can infect humans.
The cover-up has been a complex system of giving new names
to the same disease when it jumps species, and constant public assurances by so-called experts who are telling us that
there is no danger and that American beef is safe.
News reports are careful not to link the affliction in
the wild animals, known as chronic wasting disease, with Mad Cow Disease in cattle and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) in
humans. A Harvard University
report attempted to prove that CJD and Mad Cow Disease are not related, and the experts have been going to great lengths to
assure hunters that there is no danger from eating contaminated game.
Even though this infected cow in Washington
State was slaughtered and the meat put in the U. S. food chain, the USDA people are telling us not to worry. They say that slaughter
houses no longer use the brain and nervous system parts of the animal where the radical prion thought to cause the disease
is believed to be located. Therefore, they say, even if people eat meat from this infected cow, they are probably in no danger.
You are a fool if you believe it.
There is no evidence that this radical protein only stays
in the brain. Dr. Patricia A. Doyle has presented evidence that the prion can be passed through blood transmissions. If this is correct, then the prions are going to be found in all parts of the body of an infected cow, sheep, deer or human.
A report in a medical journal published in 2000 said CJD
in humans, bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) in cattle, scapies in sheep, and wasting disease in deer and other wild
animals, are all linked to the same source. We are just fooling ourselves to call the disease by a different name.
Prions are the name given to the radical proteins that
seem to be causing this insidious disease. When ingested, prions get into the system and begin destroying brain cells. It
is theorized that they cause normal proteins in the brain tissue to change and be like the mutated protein. After enough of
these abnormal proteins accumulate, they start killing brain cells. The process can take months and sometimes years. In humans
the unset of the disease is thought to sometimes take up to 30 years, but it can also develop within a much shorter time.
The disease gets its technical name, spongiform encephalopathy,
because autopsies show that victim's brains are left full of holes and look very much like a sponge.
Because the body has no natural defense mechanisms against
the radical protein, the only way to diagnose this disease is by conducting an autopsy after the victim dies. Once you have
this prion in your system, there is no cure.
Prions are not living organisms, like viruses or bacteria,
so they cannot be killed. Extreme heat from thorough cooking, extensive freezing, radiation and even exposure to bleach and
other harsh chemicals will not remove the danger.
The protein is believed passed from one animal to another,
animal to human, or human to human through feeding on infected meat or through blood transfusion. To date there is no laboratory
test that determines if the blood is infected. There is concern that blood from slaughtered cattle or wild animals spilled
on the ground, can be ingested by other animals that either feed on the remains of the carcass or even on the grass in that
area.
The disease is appearing in livestock all over the world.
Yet people are still happily feeding on meat and meat products, content with promises by the United States government and the beef industry that the food is not infected. Hunters
are still filling the forests this time of the year, eager to bag their deer, elk or other carcass to supplement the winter
food supply.
The meat industry, the stocking of wild game and issuance
of hunting and fishing licenses is such a big business in the United States,
authorities are going to great lengths to protect it.
It is my belief that anyone still eating meat is probably
already infected.
I am especially troubled by the fact that many of our
medicines, the glycerine used to make capsules for medicine, and various food products like marshmallows and frozen whipped
toppings, are made from cow blood, intentines, hooves and bones.
Death by CJD is a terrible way to go. The first symptoms
are forgetfulness, much like Alzheimer's Disease. Then the victim suffers from various forms of insanity, primarily severe
schizophrenia, followed by death. The process can be slow.
Several cases of CJD have been reported in various parts
of the United States, although this fact
has not received much public attention. That autopsies are rarely done on the many people who die of Alzheimer's Disease makes
me suspicious that some may really be victims of Mad Cow Disease. The only way to know for sure is to look at the brain tissue
and see if it is full of sponge-like holes.
I worry that a lot of people are walking around with these
deadly prions in their system. The problem is like a ticking time bomb.
For a shocking list of all of the things made from cow
body parts click here.