What's mildly irritating you today?

[Nirvana]

Originally Posted by glatt

Well there you go. You have a bit of a bias here on this issue. I'm just a beef consumer (or in this case, not a consumer any more) who knows how to read.


I really have little interest in having this discussion again, because it's history at this point. Beef producers used to grind up downer cows and feed them to healthy cows as standard practice, but after the mad cow scare, that practice was banned. Now that NEW rules have been in effect for maybe a decade, it's very unlikely for cows now to have the disease. And the beef supply is probably safe by now, because any infected cows have been eaten. I'm still going to wait a while before I start eating it again. Griff's comment about the dairy cows is a good point.
Please do not use your brush to paint me and other beef producers with your bias. I never ground up any downer cows to feed my cows neither have any of the beef producers I know. No one has done that in the USA in 20 years. That was still the practice in the UK and other countries but not here. We bury those cows. When they were allowed to be used as dog food thats where they went not in human food. Beef producers do not deserve that criticism if they are selling standing cows that become down during trucking. It is up to the processor to remove that cow and dispose of it in the manner accepted by the FDA and USDA.


This is simply false. You yourself have stated that there were cases of BSE infected cows in the USA, and that those cows came from outside the country. I remember two cow cases specifically. Maybe they are talking about full blown BSE cases. Pretty deceptive if they are making a distinction between an infected cow and a full blown disease. It reads like a Beef Council publicity memo.
These two cows originated in other countries. They were not from the US. US beef producers do not feed cattle in the same way as these other countries had.

The test rate was 1 cow tested for every 12,000 cows that were allowed to pass through the system untested. It was at that test rate that the first infected cow was found in the US.
There was mild public outcry, so the government increased the testing (tenfold!) all the way up to a staggering 1 in 1,200. Then another infected cow was found in the US. After a few years of no more hits, the testing rate has dropped back down to a lower (unknown to me) number.

Where are all the numbers of infected humans in the US? That's the only legitimate point the pro-beef lobby has. There really aren't any cases. But it's interesting that the human variant of mad cow disease has almost the same symptoms as Alzheimers.
While it may have the same symptoms it is not the same and that is just your assumption.
And reported Alzheimers cases have increased astronomically in the last few decades. It would be very easy for misdiagnosed vCDJ cases to remain hidden within the population of reported Alzheimers cases. CJD is not to be confused with vCJD, but it points to the common occurance of misdiagnosing dementia cases. With 4 million Alzheimers cases in this country, even a tiny percentage of misdiagnosed vCJD would add up to a lot of cases.
Nice scare tactic but no proof.

I don't feel much like arguing about mad cow now, especially in this thread, because with each passing day, the beef supply gets safer, and years have passed since there were BIG problems with the beef supply. It's basically safe now. But you couldn't say that 5-10 years ago because the rules were different and the testing rate was too low to have any validity.

Read The Jungle and then visit a modern day meat packing plant and then get back to me
My views are not based on bias they are based on fact not meat producer's propaganda or any animal rights propaganda. Most of the animals I raise are sold to kids for their 4-H beef projects. The rest are freezer beef or replacement genetics for other club calf producer's breeding programs. You are simply repeating AR activist propaganda. The solution for you is simple don't eat meat but don't use PETA tactics to scare others into thinking there is anything wrong with the beef supply in this country because of beef producers.

[glatt]

Originally Posted by Nirvana

Please do not use your brush to paint me and other beef producers with your bias. I never ground up any downer cows to feed my cows neither have any of the beef producers I know. No one has done that in the USA in 20 years....

Beef producers do not deserve that criticism if they are selling standing cows that become down during trucking. It is up to the processor to remove that cow and dispose of it in the manner accepted by the FDA and USDA.

As recently as 2003, the manner accepted by the FDA and USDA was to grind up those downer cows and add them to feed to be fed to other cows.

You seem to be saying the problem is not with the "beef producers" but with the "processors." As a consumer, I don't care who tainted the meat. I just wanted it to stop.

The new December 2003 FDA/USDA regulations pretty much put a stop to it (although the inspections are pathetic.) So I'm just waiting for that entire population of cattle to be eaten before I dive back in. Not sure when that will be, but I'll stipulate again that the beef supply is probably safe by now.

Cheers.

[Nirvana]

Even before FDA prohibited feeding protein derived from ruminants, other than blood products, to ruminants in August 1997, only small amounts of animal proteins were fed to ruminants in the United States, primarily to dairy cattle, because of the relatively high cost of this type of feed. Range cattle, which are on pasture most of their lives, typically receive little protein supplement of any kind.


http://www.cattlenetwork.com/content...ntentid=250926

[glatt]

Holy crap, you are right. It was 1997 that feeding downer cows to other cows was banned. I was confused, because it was December 2003 that you could still feed a downer cow to a human.

But if you are trying to argue that the beef supply 5-10 years ago was safe, you aren't scoring any points for yourself by digging up those stats.

I'm done with this discussion. I really didn't want to be having it in the first place.

cheers

[Nirvana]

Originally Posted by glatt

Holy crap, you are right. It was 1997 that feeding downer cows to other cows was banned. I was confused, because it was December 2003 that you could still feed a downer cow to a human.

But if you are trying to argue that the beef supply 5-10 years ago was safe, you aren't scoring any points for yourself by digging up those stats.

I'm done with this discussion. I really didn't want to be having it in the first place.

cheers

You totally missed the point. It is suspected that BSE has its origins in feeding ruminant bone and blood meal to ruminants which was not widely done in this country and that was banned over ten years ago.
Dairy cows do not typically last over 5 years in confinement on cement. Those would be your downer cows. Down because of the way they were kept and they had toes removed or because they had respiratory infections, not because they had BSE. Downer cow does not = BSE. Do I want to eat those cows? No, I rarely eat at McDs and I don't eat luncheon meat.