12.25.03
BSE in the USA
I gave up beef early this year - sometime in January or March - and I decided to exclude all red meat from my diet a short while later. It started when I read Michael Moore’s “Stupid White Men.” He includes a chapter on Mad Cow Disease and the ignorance that the goernment-influenced media conveys to the public on the issue. Amazingly, ignorance can be conveyed as easily as knowledge these days.
Within the next week, solely by coincidence, I read an article in a science magazine to which I had a subscription (maybe it was Scientific American, I can’t remember) on Chronic Wasting Disease, another prion disease which affects deer and elk. The article recommended some further reading and that’s when my attention was truly caught. What interested me most was the incidence of CWD in the United States, and the research showing that CWD could be passed across the species barrier, as well as from wild to captive populations. Syllogize that information, and you realize how truly at-risk our cattle ranches are.
Meanwhile, governmental policy in the US is based on restricting the importation of cattle products from countries with known infections, and pays no regard to the possibility of pre-existing infection in this country. The US government is performing the same cover-ups and gloss-overs and embracing the same selective science that got Britian in trouble in the 1980’s.
Take this article, for example.
The statement that “whole cuts of beef - steaks, chops, roasts - are generally safe to eat because mad cow disease is not known to affect the cattle’s muscle meat” was my first red flag. The first part of the sentence doesn’t follow from the reason given. Insert the word “considered” before the phrase “generally safe” and it reads something closer to the truth. The real truth is that very little is known about the disease itself. Even the notion of BSE being caused by a protein is still in debate, as that idea, if proven accurate, would shake generally accepted beliefs about DNA itself. Scientists don’t enjoy altering their models of nature. The basic ideas about DNA, RNA, and virus replication are the basis for modern virology and bacteriology, and changing those models would preclude changing the very way we treat and control disease in general.
Anyway, I could rip up the whole Q&A, but I’d never get around to finishing this entry if I tried. The folks at Metafilter feel the same way about similar articles and statements. I recommend reading their discussion and a few of their cited websites.
I also recommend reading:
Mad Cow USA by Sheldon Rampton (Contributor), John C. Stauber
Deadly Feasts: The “Prion” Controversy and the Public’s Health by Richard Rhodes (my highest recommendation; contains the most scientific background)
Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser (Author) (about the meat industry)
Toxin by Robin Cook (Fiction, but based on quite a bit of research on the beef industry)