http://edition.cnn.com/2003/US/12/24/mad.cow/

Apparently half our beef export countries have already banned American beef. I hope this doesn't get more serious.

I've been worried about something like this happening since the Canadian incident. This is going to probably lower beef prices way down. In just the past 12 months, cattle prices have gone up 30%, so that might be a good thing or low-carbers.

On the other hand, I'm not sure I want to eat as much beef while the government's being namby-pamby about this. I love pork and fish, and they don't have any of these problems. I had leg of lamb for the last two nights. ($4.99 a pound, seasoned and boneless at Trader Joe's! Cheap!)

I'm sure the vegetarians and Peta people are going to have a field day with all of this, which may be fair, given the circumstances. This could have been prevented with more sanitary feedlot conditions.

**************
"Sometimes I think you have to march right in and demand your rights, even if you don't know what your rights are, or who the person is you're talking to. Then on the way out, slam the door."

I'm not particularly concerned for my health eating beef. Brain and spinal cord are not my favorite cuts, and I've been grinding my own beef for years.


5'1" ~~ Atkins since '98 (160+)
Maintaining nicely (110 +/-)
~~ Redhead until further notice!

The media is having a field day with this. And, of course, scaring the crap out of people. Anyone notice how the places where potentially contaminated meat may have been shipped is NOT disclosed to the public?

Jen
175/129/120

Well I for one will welcome lower beef prices. I had a steak monday that was like shoe leather and it was 4.99 a pound. It said sirloin, HA! I'd be a lot more peeved if I hadn't gotten it on last day of sale for 1.50/lb.
I believe i read that they are only recalling about 10,00 pounds of beef so it can't have been a very large meat pacing place. When they had the salmonella scare a few years back the recall was in the millions of pounds. Or am I missing something?



Rob
310/237.5/180
Me, a skeptic? I trust you have proof

One tequila, two tequila,
three tequila, floor

Well, I'm a little scared.

The thing is, BSE (Mad Cow Disease) doesn't just happen spontaneously. It's spread contagiously or through contamination, primarily by cows being fed food with protein supplements made from other rendered cattle with BSE. So the idea that this is just one isolated incident doesn't sound very convincing. It could be just the only one they're sure of or that they noticed so far.

**************
"Sometimes I think you have to march right in and demand your rights, even if you don't know what your rights are, or who the person is you're talking to. Then on the way out, slam the door."

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR> cows being fed food with protein supplements made from other rendered cattle with BSE <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

... or made from rendered sheep with scrapie. Prions appear to be the problem in everything from scrapie to Bovine Spongiform Encephalitis to Kreutzfeldt-Jacobs disease. Watch you leg of lamb!

http://www.animalagriculture.org/scr.../FactSheet.htm

Prions appear to be one of the most successful life forms on the planet.

Maggie
5'1" ~~ Atkins since '98 (160+)
Maintaining nicely (110 +/-)
~~ Redhead until further notice!

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Maggie:
Prions appear to be one of the most successful life forms on the planet.

<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

That can't possibly be true. If it were, the Republicans would have already given them a tax break.

**************
"Sometimes I think you have to march right in and demand your rights, even if you don't know what your rights are, or who the person is you're talking to. Then on the way out, slam the door."

Maggie
5'1" ~~ Atkins since '98 (160+)
Maintaining nicely (110 +/-)
~~ Redhead until further notice!

A friend of mine suggested that it was all a hoax being spread by the national bread council due to their lack of sales this year.

We buy beef from a store that gets their meat from local (NY) sources. So, while I'm not 100% happy, I'm not freaking out either.

The main point in all this (as opposed what I'm sure the Physician's Committe for Responsible Medicine/ PETA will say) is that you DON'T need to eat beef to do Atkins or any other low carb diet.

And the benefits of eating low carb are - in my mind - so far out weighed by what seems to be the very tiny chance of eating contaminated meat that the media will be doing the public a HUGE disservice if they paint it in any other terms.

I don't know, this has somewhat spooked me - I don't think I'll be buying any beef until it's cleared up, that's for sure! I have some frozen hamburger I've had for about four months and was thinking of tossing it - but I'm going to use it now!

Thank goodness for ham, chicken, turkey, etc., looks like I'll be eating a lot of that for a while! I'm certainly not going to let this change my diet, that's for sure.

Low Carb Recipes

The news on NBC tonight wasn't very reassuring.

The diseased cow was a "Downer" cow. Apparently it's standard practice for the industry to slaughter cows that have become too bedraggled to stand up. They call these downer cows. They literally drag them into the slaughterhouse. A guy in the slaughterhouse looks at them and decides if they're too sick to eat (apparently they're not always that discriminating, huh?) and then they slaughter and distribute them.

Jeez. How can we expect other countries to buy our beef if we do crap like that? Even if you think it's safe for US to eat, it's not good business to take risks like that. This is going to mess up a big part of the economy.

**************
"Sometimes I think you have to march right in and demand your rights, even if you don't know what your rights are, or who the person is you're talking to. Then on the way out, slam the door."

The fact is that CJD is an extremely rare disease with an average frequency in humans worldwide of less than one case per million per year. It is one of seven similar diseases which affect many animal species and is endemic throughout the world.

The first case of CJD was identified in the German Backer family way back in 1920; the first case of BSE in cattle was not until 1985.

The full paper can be read on
http://www.second-opinions.co.uk/cjd.html

BigLez Soon to be Littlelez

If you have never made a mistake then you've done nothing

Thanks for the link, Lez. Dr. Groves does a nice job of putting the available evidence together and presenting it in a coherent essay.

I also enjoyed browsing around the rest of his site. Before this I'd heard his name, but didn't know too much about him.

Maggie
5'1" ~~ Atkins since '98 (160+)
Maintaining nicely (110 +/-)
~~ Redhead until further notice!

Hi Maggy

He is like us with all the evidence.

BigLez Soon to be Littlelez

If you have never made a mistake then you've done nothing