Mad Cow Disease Your USDA At Work

Mad Cow Disease, bovine spongiform encephalopathy, is a universally fatal neurological disease. It is a rather hideous infection for which there is no cure. It occurs naturally in the wild but has been caused in most recent years because animal parts were fed to cows. Cows are herbivores – it is counter intuitive to feed them the unsellable parts of other cows – but it’s cheap and increases their protein intake. Cow blood is still being fed to calves in lieu of milk. Mad cow has been found in two instances in America.

The Bush Administration has been adamant about forbidding meatpackers from testing for this disease. Currently meatpackers test less than 1% of the cows that are brought to them even though in some cases the cows cannot stand or walk – an indication that something might be wrong with their nervous systems. A beef producer in Kansas, Creekstone Farms Premium Beef, wanted to test all of its cows so that it could sell its products to Japan – which currently will not buy American beef products because of the US decision not to test for Mad Cow. The other meatpackers protested on the basis that if Creekstone could say that their meat was inspected that might mean they might have to inspect too. The Bush Administration recently passed a regulation making it against the law to test more than 1%.

The danger for most Americans is that they do not know the sources of their meat. In large supermarkets and fast food outlets the meat from literally thousands of cows can be found in a single hamburger. The number of cows in the mix increases the possibility of exposure and gives rise to concern. Most experts agree that it is merely a matter of time before mad cow gets into the American meat supply and mixing the meat from so many cows together will infect more people than getting hamburger made from the meat of one or two cows.

How to avoid this? Buy your meat in bulk directly from a farmer in your neighborhood. Grass fed beef is much better for you. You can very often buy ¼ - ½ a cow. You can also buy pigs and chickens from small farmers. I am here to tell you the taste of grass fed beef and home raised port and chicken is startlingly different. You won’t believe that you’re eating something what the supermarkets and restaurants call beef, pork and chicken. The taste is so much better.