I was still in medical training when I was called to testify in defense of Oprah Winfrey in the infamous "meat defamation" trial. If you remember, Oprah swore she would never eat another burger again after hearing that cows were being fed the remains of other cattle. After she tried to remind the audience that cows were supposed to be herbivores, the meat industry representative defended the practice by stating, "Now keep in mind, before you view the ruminant animal, the cow, as simply a vegetarian -- remember that they drink milk." The absurdity of the statement aside, it's not even entirely accurate. In modern agribusiness, humans drink the milk. Calves typically get milk "replacer."
Like all mammals, cows can produce milk only after they've had a baby. Most newborn calves in the United States are separated from their mothers within 12 hours -- many immediately after birth -- so the mother's milk can be marketed for human consumption. Though some dairy farmers still wean calves on whole milk, the majority of producers use milk replacer, which too often contains spray-dried cattle blood as a cheap source of protein.
According to the American Protein Corporation, which boasts to be the world's largest spray-dryer of blood, the chief disadvantage of blood-based milk replacer is simply its "different color." Milk replacer containing blood concentrate typically has a "chocolate brown" color, which can leave a dark residue on the bottles, buckets, and utensils used to feed the liquid. "For some producers," a company official remarked, "the difference is difficult to accept at first, since the product does not look 'like milk.'" But the "[c]alves don't care," he was quick to add.
The calves may not care, but Stanley Prusiner does. Prusiner won the Nobel Prize in Medicine for his discovery of prions, the infectious proteins that cause mad cow disease. He was quoted in the New York Times as calling the practice of feeding cattle blood to young calves "a really stupid idea," because it could complete the "cannibalistic" circuit blamed for the spread of the disease.
The European Commission also recommended against the practice of "intraspecies recycling of ruminant blood and blood products" -- the practice of suckling calves on cows' blood protein. Even excluding the fact that brain matter may pass into the trough that collects the blood once an animal's throat is slit, the Commission report concluded a decade ago that "[a]s far as ruminant blood is concerned, it is considered that the best approach to protect public health at present is to assume that it could contain low levels of infectivity." Since then, evidence that blood can be infectious has only grown, yet dairy calves in the United States are still drinking up to three cups of "red blood cell protein" concentrate every day.
Although the U.S. Food and Drug Administration initially proposed to ban the feeding of blood and blood products to livestock, the agency ended up reneging on their much touted promise. Let's hope that the newly reported case of mad cow disease in a California dairy cow will renew interest in closing the loopholes in feed regulations that continue to allow the feeding of slaughterhouse waste, blood and manure to farm animals in the United States.
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Michael Greger, M.D.: Mad Cow California: Stop Feeding Cows Chicken Manure
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(Moo-cula's?)
Brings me to PINK SLIME. I wonder what kind of transfer to humans we could have from that mashed up mess, amoniaized, has to be full of nerve tissue...and we didn't know we were consuming it with every burger from the burger joints.
Prion diseases are the up-and-coming plagues--nothing to be done because our protections/scientists have deemed it too difficult to test.. A rash of CJD cases will be the new national nightmare. But it will take real courage for some scientist to expose that rash. Right now, nobody wants to know.
It is hard for me to accept that so many people believe that their meat and milk contain any harmful hormones and antibiotics. I haven't seen any evidence of bad effects on consumers. And if there were not the hysteria over it, irradiation of ground beef would eliminate any chance of E. coli and other harmful bacteria contamination.
Saturday, June 25, 2011
Transmissibility of BSE-L and Cattle-Adapted TME Prion Strain to Cynomolgus Macaque
"BSE-L in North America may have existed for decades"
http://transmissiblespongiformencephalopathy.blogspot.com/2011/06/transmissibility-of-bse-l-and-cattle.html
Over the next 8-10 weeks, approximately 40% of all the adult mink on the farm died from TME.
snip...
The rancher was a ''dead stock'' feeder using mostly (>95%) downer or dead dairy cattle...
http://web.archive.org/web/20030516051623/http://www.bseinquiry.gov.uk/files/mb/m09/tab05.pdf
Yep, that's the United States of America today. We steal newborn baby cows from their mothers, steal the mother's milk, then torture the babies, then hook the mothers back up to what is charmingly called a "rape rack" to re-inseminate them. Over and over again. Until their udders are grotesquely huge and often infected. Then, when we no longer have any use for them, we send them off to a mechanized, horrifying slaughter. Even though no human being needs to drink cow milk.
The whole industry is a vast abomination against life itself.
So let's call it what it really is, shall we?
For example, ever had a grilled avocado sandwich? Better than a grilled cheese and many times healthier. You can even add some spinach, artichoke hearts and sun dried tomatoes to make it extra special.
On pizzas, I'll make a ricotta type substitute with either creamed ashews(made by soaking and blending) or mashed tofu spiked with garlic, fresh basil, lemon juice and nutritional yeast. Also, you can use avocado or just load up your pizza with tons of veggies to bulk it up.
And for ice cream, there are a billion store bought varieties out there. Made from coconut milk, almond milk, rice milk, soy milk, flax, hemp etc. Also, you can just make it yourself at home with a frozen banana and some almond milk zipped in a blender.
Second: A nation, in no small part, is defined by how it treats the helpless--including helpless animals. This in one more example of how the USA has been becoming a sickly nation.
Exploitation in the extreme.
Why does this remind me of GMO science and Monsanto's lab of re-engineering what nature does in an effort to make money.
And secondly, where does this play into when in realizing cows are mammals as we are and share some 99% of the same DNA as every other living organism, and add to that the risk to cross contamination of human blood that is the pre-cursor for HIV, HTLV I, II, Hepatitis A,B & C which are all blood & fluid born diseases, what kind of roulette table are they playing on with the practice of using blood born products with all manner of different cows?
Makes me want to give up cheese and switch to almond, coconut or soy milk.