Mad Cow Disease Another Ugly Side of Beef
When Health Secretary Stephen Dorrell addressed the British House
of Commons on March 20, 1996, he was ashen-faced for good reason.
Like numerous other government representatives, for years Dorrell
had been reassuring the nervous British public that the beef in
their hamburgers, kidney pies and Sunday roasts was as safe and
sound as the Pound sterling. Dorrell had also steadfastly insisted
that no connection existed between any human illness and Mad Cow
Disease, the incurable dementia that has killed 160,000 British
cows since 1985. On March 20, however, a somber Secretary Dorrell
faced the legislative body, and the nation, and proceeded to eat
his very words. A government advisory committee, he explained, had
concluded that Mad Cow Disease was indeed the "most likely" cause
of a recent outbreak in young British adults of a similar fatal
disease.
The announcement was an embarrassing about-face for the government.
It stunned and angered the British people, and sent shockwaves
through Europe and around the world. Beef went untouched in
supermarkets by alarmed shoppers, and the chairman of the
governments advisory committee said that victims could number in
the hundreds of thousands.
In the US, government and livestock industry representatives did
their best to allay public concern, insisting that domestic herds
were free of Mad Cow Disease (known formally as bovine spongiform
encephalopathy, BSE) and that adequate safeguards were in place.
Few of these reports mentioned, however, that the very practice
that caused and fostered Mad Cow Disease in Englandnamely feeding
cattle the processed remains of other livestockis altogether
commonplace on American farms. In 1989 for example, approximately
800 million pounds of slaughterhouse remains were fed to US beef
and dairy cows as an inexpensive protein supplement designed to
boost milk and meat production.
Safety concerns aside, forcing cows and other livestock to eat
animal remains makes natural herbivores into carnivores and often
into cannibals. Unless the US government acts swiftly to outlaw
this practice, many now believe that a major outbreak of Mad Cow
Disease in the US is possible, even likely.
Still Crazy After All These Years
In an international news release issued in March, EarthSave joined
with the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM) in
Washington, DC to draw attention to Mad Cow Disease. The release
also sought to counter the mistaken, albeit widely reported notion
that beef can be safe if only we somehow purge the meat supply of
contaminants and contagions, such as the infectious agent
responsible for Mad Cow Disease. Safe? The fact is, even when cows
are healthy, eating them isnt. According to numerous studies by
noted researchers, too many people worldwide are already suffering
and dying from deadly substances found in beef, as well as in
poultry, pork, fish and dairy products. These ingredients,
including saturated fat and cholesterol, occur almost exclusively
in foods of animal origin, and have been implicated time and again
in the epidemic of heart disease, certain cancers, diabetes and
obesity that plague Western nations.
To stimulate discussion in the heart of Americas cattle country on
Mad Cow Disease and meat consumptions human toll, EarthSave and
PCRM attempted to place in the Des Moines [Iowa] Register newspaper
an ad discussing this situation. The newspaper refused to print the
$1,000 ad, however, deeming it unsuitable for their publication.
Did the fact that the Register accepts great sums of advertising
dollars each year from the meat industry influence the publisher's
decision?
While the ad didn't play in Des Moines, it did have a far-reaching
effect. Columnist Colman McCarthy, a member of EarthSaves Board of
Advisors, responded with a column entitled Eating Cows is the Real
Madness that appeared in the Washington Post and the International
Herald Tribune, newspapers with a combined readership of well over
one million. In his column, McCarthy wrote, If Mad Cow Disease can
cause an international panic and political heartburn in the British
Parliament because 10 Brits may possibly have contracted a rare
nerve disorder from tainted beef, it should follow that the heavens
themselves would be shaken by humanitys outcry over the proven
deadliness of meat thats available everywhere.
Another mainstream newspaper was also having a beef with beef.
Meat-eaters learned more in the past week than they ever wanted to
know about the origins of a hamburger," the Wall Street Journal
reported. "The British experience of Mad Cow Diseaseand its links
to commercial livestock feed and human illnessforever dispelled
the image of contented cows grazing on sweet grass and hay. Modern
agribusiness isn't like Green Acres... Most Americans are
unfamiliar with farm life and were shocked to find that modern
agriculture had made cattle into carnivores [and cannibals],
fattened on meat and bone from sheep and cows.
