The Bush administration's report is virtually 100% lies!
Paid for by the meat industry. For some real info on Mad Cow see:
http://baltech.org/lederman/mad-cow-12-28-00.html
NY TIMES
December 1, 2001
U.S. Mad Cow Risk Is Low, a Study by Harvard Finds
By ELIZABETH BECKER
WASHINGTON, Nov. 30 The Agriculture Department released a study today that
found that there is very little risk that American cattle will contract mad
cow disease or that the disease would ever pose a public health problem for
people.
Agriculture Secretary Ann M. Veneman praised the results of the study, which
her department commissioned, saying it showed that the current controls on
imports and surveillance of herds were working.
The study confirmed that the prime defense against the introduction and
spread of the disease, bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or B.S.E., was a
ban on meat and bone meal used to feed cattle.
Ms. Veneman said the government would bolster programs to ensure that mad
cow did not enter the country, saying, "We cannot let down our guard or
reduce our vigilance."
The three-year study, by the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis, was greeted
with relief by the beef and meat industries. But some scientists questioned
its results, particularly because it was based on risk models, and not
extensive testing.
Dr. John Collinge, a neurologist at University College in London who is a
British expert on the disease, said the United States was making a big
mistake by refusing to test cattle herds. "Every country in Europe went
through a phase of denying they had a problem," Dr. Collinge said. "After
mandatory testing was introduced last year, countries that denied it
vehemently discovered that they did have the disease."
The United States has tested 12,000 head of cattle out of a population of
100 million. Europe has tested five million. Ms. Veneman said that she would
increase testing American herds and that next year 12,500 head would be tested.
B.S.E., a brain-wasting disease, was found in British cattle in the
1980's and has spread throughout Europe and, most recently, to Japan, which
today announced its third case. The human analogue, variant
Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, has been tied to the deaths of more than 100
Europeans, mostly in Britain.
Mad cow disease has never been detected in cattle in North America.
The Harvard researchers based their 550-page report on reviews of American
and European programs, data on the course of the disease through Europe and
surveys of meat processing in the United States. The study credited early
import bans on animals, meat and certain animal feed for preventing the
disease from crossing the Atlantic.
"Mad cow disease is very unlikely to become a major animal or public health
problem in the United States," said Dr. George M. Gray, who led the research
team.
"This gives consumers and cattle producers the assurance of the safety of
the American beef supply," said Charles Schroeder, head of the National
Cattlemen's Beef Association.
But American and European scientists questioned why the study was conducted
by the Harvard center, which has been criticized for receiving research
money from industries under study.
Dr. Thomas Pringle, a biochemist in Eugene, Ore., and an expert on mad cow,
said the researchers were taking official data at face value. He said it was
unclear how much banned British animal feed had been imported here after
rebagging and mislabeling.
Japanese officials thought that their country was free of the disease based
on similar sets of presumptions, he said. This year, a cow died of B.S.E.
and started a panic that has cut beef consumption.
"Testing is no more expensive than paying for a risk-analysis test, and it
is the only true way to find out if your herds have the disease," Dr.
Pringle said. "But let's face it, no country wants to find the disease."
The president of the American Meat Institute, J. Patrick Boyle, said the
study reflected the $50 billion meat industry's safety. "America's
B.S.E.-free status is not luck," Mr. Boyle said. "The U.S. is free of many
animal diseases that plague other nations, testaments to the success of
government-industry efforts."
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http://baltech.org/lederm
an/mad-cow-12-28-00.html
Why Is ABC Lying
About Mad Cow Disease?
by Robert Lederman
(718) 743-3722
robert.lederman@worldnet.att.net
December 28, 2000
On 12/26/2000 ABCTV's news show Nightline did a lengthy piece on mad cow
disease.
Click Here to view their transcript.
In the report they went to great pains to claim that: * 1. There was not
one case in the US * 2. US cattle are not fed animal parts, bone meal
etc.- which is officially considered the likeliest source of the disease.
There are both knowingly false claims. Hundreds of thousands of animals in
the US are infected. Once you read the quotes below about what US cattle are
really being fed you'll never look at a steak the same way again.
You may recall that ABC investigative reporter John Stossel was reprimanded
recently and forced to publicly apologize for a report he did that used
false data to "prove" that organic food was no safer or more nutritious than
foods repeatedly sprayed with pesticides. Once again ABCTV is up to it's old
tricks, creating a seemingly well-documented news piece that is in reality
nothing more than a vehicle for corporate disinformation.
Here's Nightline's summation of the mad cow story excerpted from their
transcript. Note the claim about cattle feed then compare it to the US News
and World Report excerpt and other related news clips below about what is
really being fed to US cattle. Most European nations and Japan prohibit all
imports of US beef, dairy and many other food-related products based on
public health concerns.
The FDA, EPA and other health related agencies will be in charge of handling
this issue under GW Bush. Considering who he has picked so far as his agency
heads-virtually all of whom are connected to corporate polluters, the oil
industry or the CIA-and the fact that cattle-raising states are his top
financial contributors and political allies it would seem very unlikely that
GW Bush will do anything to rectify this situation.
Perhaps the most ironic aspect of the Nightline piece was that it repeatedly
criticized British and European leaders for deceiving their constituents
about the problem in order to protect their food industries. We know that
could never happen here in the US-right?
Nightline's mad cow story was just the latest effort by the corporate media
to protect the interests of this nation's incredibly corrupt food
industry-America's largest recipient of corporate welfare. However,
protecting profits may only be part of the motivation. Spreading disease via
the food supply is an effective method of Eugenics or population control.
While much of the media can be accurately described as having a CIA
influence, ABC-TV carries that influence to the ultimate degree having been
directly owned by a CIA director and a consortium of top level US
intelligence veterans. From 1985-1996 ABC was owned by Capital Cities-an
investment company whose top stockholder was then CIA director William
Casey. It continues to give the intelligence community's version of the
news, particularly in shows like Nightline.
NIGHTLINE:
"MICHEL MARTIN 'Joining us now, Nightline correspondent Dave Marash. David,
Americans do import some beef, so why isn't this a problem here?'
DAVE MARASH 'Well, the real answer is, Michel, that meat and bone meal, the
cattle feed used in the United Kingdom and much of Europe and the rest of
the world, which is the likeliest cause of mad cow disease, is not used as
cattle feed here. As a result, we have never had a home-grown case of mad
cow disease. There have been a couple of cases of animals imported from
overseas that turned out to be infected-principally sheep. They've been
quarantined. And as yet, as I say, no American cases of mad cow disease.'"
US NEWS & WORLD REPORT Sept. 1, 1997
The next bad beef scandal? Cattle feed now contains things like manure and
dead cats- "To trim costs, many farmers add a variety of waste substances to
their livestock and poultry feed--and no one is making sure they are doing
so safely. Chicken manure in particular, which costs from $15 to $45 a ton
in comparison with up to $125 a ton for alfalfa, is increasingly used as
feed by cattle farmers despite possible health risks to consumers. In
regions with large poultry operations, such as California, the South, and
the mid-Atlantic, more and more farmers are turning to chicken manure as a
cheaper alternative to grains and hay... Health officials are not as
enthusiastic.
Chicken manure often contains campylobacter and salmonella
bacteria, which can cause disease in humans, as well as intestinal
parasites, veterinary drug residues, and toxic heavy metals such as arsenic,
lead, cadmium, and mercury. These bacteria and toxins are passed on to the
cattle and can be cycled to humans who eat beef contaminated by feces during
slaughter. A scientific paper scheduled for publication this fall in the
journal Preventive Medicine points to the potential dangers of recycling
chicken waste to cattle. "Feeding manure that has not been properly
processed is supercharging the cattle feces with pathogens likely to cause
disease in consumers," says Dr. Neal Barnard, head of the Washington,
D.C.--based health lobby Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, an
author of the article...
In addition, some 40 billion pounds a year of
slaughterhouse wastes like blood, bone, and viscera, as well as the remains
of millions of euthanized cats and dogs passed along by veterinarians and
animal shelters, are rendered annually into livestock feed--in the process
turning cattle and hogs, which are natural herbivores, into unwitting
carnivores...Animal-feed manufacturers and farmers also have begun using or
trying out dehydrated food garbage, fats emptied from restaurant fryers and
grease traps, cement-kiln dust, even newsprint and cardboard that are
derived from plant cellulose. Researchers in addition have experimented with
cattle and hog manure, and human sewage sludge."
UPI Headline:
WHO warns mad cow has spread worldwide Wire Service: OTC (COMTEX Newswire)
Date: Sat, Dec 23, 2000 GENEVA, Switzerland, Dec. 23 (UPI) -- World Health
Organization medical experts said Friday the global agency is concerned the
mad cow disease and its fatal human variant Creutzfeldt-Jacob Disease has
spread worldwide through the movement of contaminated materials. "We have
concerns that there was sufficient international trade in meat and bone meal
and cattle that there has actually been exposure worldwide already," Dr.
Maura Ricketts, of the WHO's animal and food-related public health risks
unit, told reporters following an informal meeting of scientific and policy
experts from international agencies.
The WHO estimates that between Nov.
1986 and Dec. 2000 about 180,000 animal cases of BSE were confirmed in the
United Kingdom and about 1,300 in other European countries primarily France,
Ireland, Portugal and Switzerland. Moreover, Germany and Spain reported
their first cases in November of this year."
Is The Cause Prions or Pesticides? What may be an even bigger case of public
deception is that many scientists now believe mad cow disease is caused by
organophosphate pesticides rather than by infected cattle feed-which
nevertheless remains a very serious public health concern. These pesticides
are in everything from baby food and vaccines to head lice medications used
on school children. Organophosphate pesticides-which were invented by the
Nazis for the purpose of chemical warfare-are also exactly what the CDC
(Center for Disease Control) and NYC Mayor Rudolph Giuliani ordered
massively sprayed on NYC last year during the alleged West Nile Virus crisis.
Click Here
to view a report entitled: Insecticide Causes Mad Cow Disease
Important evidence to support this theory is that deer and elk herds which
feed on grass rather than commercially-produced feed are also experiencing
an epidemic of mad cow disease.
(Cl
ick Here) "Chronic wasting disease was first seen in Colorado, in 1967, in
deer belonging to several research facilities. Since then, the disease has
been diagnosed in captive and wild deer and elk in northern Colorado and
southern Wyoming.
Recently, CWD has also been found in farmed elk in
Nebraska and South Dakota. In the 1970's, CWD occurred at the Metro Toronto
Zoo, in a mule deer that had been imported from a zoological park in
Colorado. The mule deer was humanely destroyed and incinerated. In 1996, CWD
was diagnosed in Saskatchewan in a game ranched elk that had been imported
from the United States. All animals that had been exposed to the disease
were humanely destroyed. Chronic wasting disease has recently been diagnosed
in a ranched elk in Saskatchewan. The elk's dam had been imported from the
United States."
FROM: www.mad-cow.org U.S. Government Researchers
Find Mad Deer Disease, Like Mad Cow Disease, Can Infect Normal Human
Brains-Public Health and Farming Groups Demand FDA Action To Protect Humans
and Animals from Fatal Disease in U.S.
"Washington, D.C.-- Public health advocates are demanding that the Food and
Drug Administration close loopholes in animal feed regulations to prevent
the spread of U.S. mad cow-type diseases -- now at epidemic levels in
Western deer and elk -- that might infect people who eat meat. In a letter
sent today to the FDA, the Center for Food Safety (CFS), the Humane Farming
Association and families of U.S. victims of the human version of mad cow
disease, Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD), are demanding new efforts to
protect public health and food safety. The FDA was asked to respond to a
legal petition filed in January 1999 that would change U.S. animal feed
regulations to prevent the spread of U.S. mad cow-type diseases already
occurring in deer, elk, sheep and humans, and suspected in pigs and cattle.
Under current FDA regulations, animals known to be infected with mad
cow-type disease such as deer, elk and sheep, can be legally fed to pigs,
chickens and pets, which in turn can be rendered and fed to cows. Billions
of pounds of slaughterhouse waste in the form of rendered animal by-products
are fed to U.S. livestock every year as fat and protein supplements, despite
this practice being the known route of transmission of British mad cow
disease. A fatal "mad deer" disease called chronic wasting disease is
occurring at epidemic levels in deer and elk in Western states and on game
farms, CFS legal director Joseph Mendelson wrote in the letter to the FDA.
This may already be claiming human lives as is suggested by the alarming
appearance of unusually young victims of CJD."
Headline: Stop factory farming and end BSE, UK scientists say Wire Service:
RTna (Reuters North America) Date: Mon, Dec 4, 2000 "LONDON (Reuters) - UK
scientists urged Europe on Monday to help farmers move away from intensive
agriculture, saying the end of factory farming was the only way to kill mad
cow disease. The scientists, who advised and criticized the UK government at
the height of Britain's mad cow crisis, told EU farm ministers that tests
for bovine spongiform encephalopathy were not sensitive enough to guarantee
BSE-free beef."
Here's a good example of the kind of deception US officials specialize in
when balancing public health concerns against the interests of their bosses
in the food industry.
Headline: U.S. does not share EU's mad cow fears - Glickman Wire Service:
RTna (Reuters North America) Date: Wed, Nov 22, 2000 "WASHINGTON (Reuters) -
U.S. consumers do not share Europe's "hysteria" over mad cow disease because
of an effective U.S. regulatory system, said U.S. Agriculture Secretary Dan
Glickman on Wednesday. The European Union is struggling to rebuild consumer
confidence in Europe's beef after fresh outbreaks of bovine spongiform
encephalopathy (BSE), or mad cow disease in France and Spain."There seems to
be a hysteria over there," Glickman told reporters after attending a food
bank event with President Clinton.
Mad cow disease was "something that we
have avoided in our country through having an effective regulatory system,"
he added. BSE's human form, known as new variant Creutzfeld-Jakob Disease,
has killed more than 80 people in Britain and two in France. There is no
known cure for the deadly disease that wastes away the brain. Spain reported
its first case of the disease on Wednesday. Although no cases of BSE or mad
cow disease have ever been found in the United States, four Vermont sheep in
July tested positive for a disease related to BSE. The USDA is seeking legal
authority to seize about 350 Vermont sheep suspected of having TSE, or
transmissible spongiform encephalopathy."
New York Times, Tuesday, October 31, 2000 Biologists Say Hunters Should
Beware of Brain Disease Likening the situation to the early days of the mad
cow epidemic in Britain, some biologists say American hunters should be
warned about a similar malady that has infected wild deer and elk in parts
of Colorado and Wyoming. The malady is called chronic wasting disease. While
no cases of human disease have been directly traced to deer or elk meat,
there is a growing body of evidence to suggest that it could happen.
And with the hunting season in full swing, a number of scientists are calling
for more action to warn hunters about the potential problem...The best
available science shows that chronic wasting disease can infect human tissue
but wildlife officials are carrying on with "business as usual," said Dr.
Tom Pringle, a biologist in Eugene, Ore., who closely follows T.S.E.
worldwide and independently studies the disease. "Who'd want hamburger from
a cow where 15 percent of the herd had mad cow disease?" Dr. Pringle asked.
"Who'd want mutton from a sheep where 15 percent of the sheep had scrapie?
To me it looks like Russian roulette for hunters."
Also see:
NY Times 12/1/2000 As Mad Cow Disease Spreads in Europe, Consumers Panic; NY
Times 10/29/2000 British Wrongly Lulled People on 'Mad Cow,' Report Finds
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