Re: [gardeners] OT - Mad cow disease in cats
Dan Dixon (gardeners@globalgarden.com)
Sun, 11 Mar 2001 13:36:22 -0600
The odds of contracting Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (the human equivalent of
mad cow disease) in the U.S. are about a million to one. You are twice as
likely to get struck by lightning. The new variant that has infected people
in Britin and France is even more rare and has never occurred in the U.S.
There is also no scientific proof that any human CJD is caused by ingesting
BSD-infected beef. Most people get CJD because theyıre born with a genetic
defect or as a result of a spontaneous genetic mutation.
The current attempt to foment consumer hysteria in the U.S. over meat
products appears to be driven by a David Fenton company called Environmental
Media Services, an organization that is notorious for orchestrating
anti-product scares regarding numerous issues such as pesticides,
genetically modified foods, dairy products, animal rights, etc. In this
case, Fenton et al are going after the meat industry. Newsweek is frequently
inaccurate and regularly presents knee-jerk news. I have not read it, but I
suspect the article contains the same junk-science that typically is used in
anti-product propaganda campaigns driven by EMS and their clients.
My 2 cents.
Dan Dixon
> From: Margaret Lauterbach <mlaute@micron.net>
> Reply-To: gardeners@globalgarden.com
> Date: Sun, 11 Mar 2001 08:44:29 -0700
> To: gardens@LSV.UKY.EDU
> Subject: [gardeners] OT - Mad cow disease in cats
>
> The March 12 Newsweek magazine has a cover story on mad cow disease
> reporting that cats fed beef byproducts in cat food have developed symptoms
> of BSE. Prions seem to reside primarily in the brain and nerve fibers,
> including the spinal cord. Should Americans stop eating beef? The article
> certainly gave me more than pause. I still have some Wranglers in the
> refrig which I'll toss out, and I won't buy hamburger again. They haven't
> found BSE in America, but critics say they would if they looked harder. Of
> that British ground mad cow feed, it was shipped all over the world, to
> more than 80 countries. Indonesia imported some 600,000 metric tons, and
> Thailand 185,000 metric tons. These countries are apparently not
> monitoring for disease in animals there. Scares me. Margaret L
>
>