Hiding The Mad Cow Problem

NVCJD has a number of other points worth noting.

BSE has been observed frequently as the result of cattle consuming
bovine-based foods. It was a tradition for a long time to feed the ground
up remains of sick animals to others. In fact, some pet food companies
do this currently, though with meats derrived from domestic animals.

At any rate. Poor standards have been to blame for much of this
problem. People are not told that cows were fed cow. Few understand
that there is no cure for NVCJD, or that cooking your meat for longer will
not help.

NVCJD is a prion. It is a protein that has gone out of shape. This mazing
fluke has led to a self-replicating protein that copies itself within the
nervous tissue of its host. The body's denfense mechanism attacks the
entire infected area. Cells and cell clusters are consumed by white blood
cells. When the dead cells disintigrate, the prions remain, and are
reintroduced into the host environment. This causes the body to eat
away at teh brain, leaving holes and a sponge-like tissue behind.

The dementia observed in those infected is the result of extensive brain
tissue elimination. Due to the extensive networking capacity of the
brain, the syptoms only become obvious once there has been massive
tissue loss. Hence, from prognosis to death - the time is very short.

If you want to know more - ask. I can post a comprehensive summary of
the disease online.

It is a very important subject and our ruling politicians want to sweep regulation of it under the NAFTA rug. They want NAFTA Tribunals to deal with any further cases of BSE to reduce economic effects. Just think of all the money tobacco companies could have saved if they had had NAFTA Tribunals to turn to when the link between cancer & tobacco was proven. <p><b>Kudos 4canada & Tristan.</b> <p>Tristan, I, for one, would be interested to see the comprehensive summary you spoke of.

The best thing for Canadians to do would be to get together with the Mom & Pop ranchers and make arrangements to buy beef from them, slaughtered and wrapped, at less than supermarket prices. The ranchers would be asked to guarantee that they would not feed any products containing anything that a cow does not normally eat. No calf starter formula with whole blood, etc.

The government doesn't protect us anyway so we should take it upon ourselves to do so before they declare an act like this to be some form of terrorism. I trust the Mom & Pop Ranchers way more than I trust the government rubber stamp agencies.

Milton,

I also trust the small farmer still has a heart and a conscience and that is where we need to turn to for buying our food. Bring back more local farmers markets.

The government seal of approval is made with corporate ink.

Here is the link to the mad cow book that prwatch has provided free to download. I printed it off, read it and learned more than I really wanted to about BSE.

http://www.prwatch.org/books/mcusa.pdf

Please educate yourselves about this, neither the US nor Canadian governments have the welfare of their citizens in mind, they are only interested in profits for the corporations.

Yes, that`s true! The US and Canadian governments only care about PROFITS!!! Not only is it evident in the mad cow problem but also with genetically modified foods, whichhave been in Canadian grocery stores for about 5 years now, without public knowledge or approval. And the increase of large corporate hog farms, where pigs are held in small pens, and there are thousands of them, and because of this they pump them full of anti-biotics to ward off infection, and steroids to beef them up because they get no exercise. The lagoons which hold the pig sewage contain more sewage than cities as large as 40,000, and these lagoons leak, polluting water tables. The smell form this also can be detected for miles away, and there is a higher incidence of respiratory diseases associated with living close to one of these hog farms. And big agri-businesses and food companies like Maple Leaf build a large slaughterhouse in, say, Brandon, Manitoba, promising 'jobs and prosperity' but the jobs are only around $8 an hour. Given that you can`t live off of a wage like that, and also given that the job is an extremely unpleasant one, the turnover rate in these factories are high, so the company goes to Mexico, or other third world countries, and lures these workers north to work in their northern sweatshops.

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Dave Ruston

I think that you neglected to note one thing, Tristan: The chances of getting variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD - the kind you would get from eating a cow that had BSE/mad cow disease) is less than the chances of you getting classical Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, which you don't contract from cows. About 30 people in Canada get classical CJD every year. And considering that the media has whipped up the public into a frenzy over mad cow, I highly doubt that the Canadian government is hiding the problem.

Anonymous, why are we supposed to trust the statistics supplied by the government. They want to seep everything under the rug. What is the saying, <b>" shoot, shovel and shut up"</b>? Yes, I know he said he was joking, but I don't believe him.

for the condition to manifest, the unnatural cannibalistic feeding practices and inhumane treatment of the animals haven't been widespread for longer than that, we could conceivably only be seeing the beginning of something really terrible. Keep in mind too that the disease can appear to be other types of dementia, especially when it strikes older people. I don't think that they routinely test for it with every case of dementia.