More MAD COW News.... It Ain't Pretty
 

Yeah, MAD COW is worth keeping track of but this breaking story gives something more scary. Our own govt. agencies unwilling to cooperate????

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USDA refused to release mad cow records
By Steve Mitchell
United Press International
Published 12/23/2003 11:05 PM
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WASHINGTON, Dec. 23 (UPI) -- Although the United States Department of Agriculture insisted the U.S. beef supply is safe Tuesday after announcing the first documented case of mad cow disease in the United States, the agency for six months repeatedly refused to release its tests for mad cow to United Press International.

The USDA claims to have tested approximately 20,000 cows for the disease in 2002 and 2003, but has been unable to provide any documentation in support of this to UPI, which first requested the information in July.

In addition, former USDA veterinarians tell UPI they have long suspected the disease was in U.S herds and there are probably additional infected animals.

USDA Secretary Ann M. Veneman announced late Tuesday during a hastily scheduled news briefing that a cow slaughtered Dec. 9 on a farm in Mabton, Wash., had tested positive for mad cow disease. The farm has been quarantined but the meat from the animal may have already passed into the human food supply.

The slaughtered meat was sent for processing to Midway Meats in Washington and the USDA is currently trying to trace if the meat went for human consumption, Veneman said.

The fear is mad cow disease can infect humans and cause a brain-wasting condition known as variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease that is always fatal. More than 100 people contracted this disease in the United Kingdom after a widespread outbreak of mad cow disease in that country in the 1980s.

An outbreak of mad cow disease in the United States has the potential to dwarf the situation in the United Kingdom because the American beef industry is far larger and U.S. beef is exported to countries all over the globe.

"We're talking about billions of people" around the world who potentially have been exposed to U.S. beef, Lester Friedlander, a former USDA veterinarian who has been insisting mad cow is present in American herds for years, told UPI.

The USDA insisted the case is probably isolated and the US beef supply is safe. "I plan to serve beef for my Christmas dinner," Veneman said, "and we remain confident in the safety of our food supply."

Responded Friedlander: "She might as well kiss her (behind) goodbye, then."

Veneman went on to say she had confidence in the USDA surveillance system for detecting mad cow and protecting the public, noting the agency has tested more than 20,000 cattle for the disease this year.

This represents only a small percentage of the millions of cows in the U.S. herd, however, and experts say current procedures are unlikely to detect mad cow.

The Washington cow was tested because it was a so-called downer cow -- a cow unable to stand on its own -- which is a sign of mad cow disease. However, the United States sees approximately 200,000 of these per year or about 10 times as many animals are tested for the disease.

USDA officials told UPI as recently as Dec. 17 the agency still is searching for documentation of its mad cow testing results from 2002 and 2003.

UPI initially requested the documents on July 10, and the agency sent a response letter dated July 24, saying it had launched a search for any documents pertaining to mad cow tests from 2002 and 2003.

"If any documents exist, they will be forwarded," USDA official Michael Marquis wrote in the letter.

Despite this and a 30-day limit under the Freedom of Information Act on responding to such a request, the USDA never sent any corresponding documents. The agency's FOI office also did not return several calls from UPI placed over a series of months.

Finally, UPI threatened legal action in early December if the agency did not respond.

In a Dec. 17 letter to UPI from USDA Freedom of Information Act Office Andrea E. Fowler, the agency wrote: "Your request has been forwarded to the (Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service) for processing and to search for the record responsive to your earlier request."

To date, the USDA has not said if any records exist or if they will be sent to UPI.

"It's always concerned me that they haven't used the same rapid testing technique that's used in Europe," where mad cow has been detected in several additional countries outside of the United Kingdom, Michael Schwochert, a retired USDA veterinarian in Ft. Morgan, Colo., told UPI.

"It was almost like they didn't want to find mad cow disease," Schwochert said.

He noted he had been informed that approximately six months ago a cow displaying symptoms suggestive of mad cow disease showed up at the X-cel slaughtering plant in Ft. Morgan.

Once cows are unloaded off the truck they are required to be inspected by USDA veterinarians. However, the cow was spotted by plant employees before USDA officials saw it and "it went back out on a special truck and they called the guys in the office and said don't say anything about this," Schwochert said.

Veneman said the Washington case "does not pose any kind of significant risk to the human food chain."

Friedlander called that assessment, aptly enough, "B.S." Referring to the USDA's failure to provide their testing documentation to UPI, he said, "The government doesn't have records to substantiate their testing so how do they know whether this is an isolated case." The agency also cannot provide any assurance that this animal did not get processed for human consumption, he said.

Schwochert agreed with that, saying the USDA's sparse testing means they cannot say with any confidence whether there are additional cases or not.

Both Schwochert and Friedlander said the report of a mad cow case would devastate the U.S. beef industry.

"It scares the hell out of me what it's going to do to the cattle industry," Schwochert said. "This could be catastrophic."

Only hours after Veneman's announcement, Japan -- the biggest importer of U.S. beef -- and South Korea both banned the importation of American meat.

The American Meat Institute, a trade group in Arlington, Va., representing the U.S. meat and poultry industry, maintained the U.S. beef supply is safe for human consumption.

"First and foremost, the U.S. beef supply is safe," AMI spokesman Dan Murphy told UPI. "We think its safe for U.S. consumers to eat."

This is because infectious prions, thought to be the causative agent of mad cow and vCJD, are not found in muscle tissue that comprises hamburgers and steaks, he said. They are generally located in brain and spinal cord tissue.

However, recent studies have suggested prions may occur, albeit in smaller numbers, in muscle tissue, and bits of brain and spinal cord tissue have been detected in hamburger meat.

Other protective measures have also been put in place that should protect consumers, Murphy said.

Mad cow disease is thought to be spread by feeding infected cow tissue back to cattle -- a practice that was common in the United Kingdom and is thought to have contributed to their widespread outbreak. The practice has been banned in the United States by the Food and Drug Administration since 1997, which should help ensure this is "an isolated case," Murphy said.

A report from the General Accounting Office issued just last year, however, found some ranchers in the United States still violate the feed ban and do feed cow tissue to cattle.

The GAO concluded: "While (mad cow disease) has not been found in the United States, federal actions do not sufficiently ensure that all (mad cow)-infected animals or products are kept out or that if (mad cow) were found, it would be detected promptly and not spread to other cattle through animal feed or enter the human food supply."

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Steve Mitchell is UPI's medical correspondent. E-mail [email protected]


Copyright ? 2001-2003 United Press International

see now this pisses me off.. i like my steak still bleeding

What, you expect the government to tell us the truth? Beef is big business in this country... These cattle barrons shell out a lot of $$$ to help these politicians get elected... the government can't release a story like that or these cattle barrons would go broke. :2 cents:

so the u.s. gov is in cahoots with the cattle barons to kill americans and ruin their own businesses?
:thumbsup :1orglaugh :1orglaugh

I rarely eat meat anymore. You look at cattle and think that's what you're really consuming and it makes me want to go and barf.

We really need to stop eating animals. Its fucking discusting to eat a creature's muscles and flesh and so prehistoric.

99% of people that eat meat could never do it if they had to go out and kill it and gut it themselves.

Why don't they call it Cow Mignon and say it for what it is? Because Filet Mignon sounds to gourmetish and nicely labeled.

Okay, here's where reality hits the road.

I take it you've never been hungry.

Lemme tell you right now, if I dropped your ass off in the middle of the woods without a Starbucks or McDonalds around and in a few day you got hungry enough:

YOU WOULD EAT YOUR OWN CHILDREN

Why do we eat animals? Because they're stupider than we are, or meaner or would eat us without reservation.

You forget all about how cute they are or butchering etc. when you're starving. So that 'don't eat meat' shit can go out the window. It don't mean eat it like there's no tomorrow but know why you do and why it's important.

We need to send people out into the jungles or the forests for a few weeks. To see what really goes on in the world. Two weeks of seein' how every damned thing is trying to eat you would change your mind.

Rare or well-done: it wouldn't make a difference. You can't even steralize surgical/dental tools from it if they were used on an infected person.

Our bodies as we know them have been eating meat for a very very long time. Millions of years. Why should we stop now?

The Time Traveler guy, John Triton mentioned this.

One of my friends just got back from work-study in Africa where he was working as part of a medical school program. Out in the wilderness and he and a friend with their guide bought a goat and then slaughtered it themselves. So saying 99% of people isnt a real approximation. I mean this guy is very average, and so his friend, doesnt come off as the kind of person you might expect to kill animal, and yet they did.

i wish i still had that iraq public relations guy picture, or whoever he was, it seems suitable for this article.

In "Fast Food Nation" there's a chapter regarding mad cow disease. Scary stuff, but I figure I still have a better chance getting killed/disabled driving on the roads in Atlanta than I do eating a good steak, so I'll continue to do both. :)

Sounds like my trips deep into the back country...I walk with my ears open :)

No!!!! Not the beef! I can't live without eating beef!

I'm sorry. But anyone who doesn't eat meat is an ungrateful bastard.

If you said that shit in my house i fuckin smack your ass half way accross the room.

I admit i'm poor. But I grew up even poorer. Ive been homeless so many times I can't even fucking count. And you are bitching about your gourmet beef? Try eating out of a fucking dumpster, then you will see what gross food really is.
It would make my day if I found a full mcdonalds hamburger in the garbage.

Anyone who doesn't eat meet is ungreatful, spoiled, and a fucking pussy.

I have food now, I have clothes, I have a place to stay. You have no idea how happy I am for that.

I stopped eating Beef about 10 Years ago.

When I heard about Mad Cow Disease no one really knew or understood what the significance of these "Prion" Protiens were about. I was called a pussy a few times as I tried to explain it, sometimes being a topic at a dinner table once people saw my plate and food selections on it.
We'll see who is flopping around on the ground unable to control there nerves and thoughts as this shit spreads. I doubt it will be me and I seriously doubt this will be last time we see Mad Cow in the headlines. Wait till you see how it affects humans which is inevitably next in the United States and one of the most gruesome ways to die because it is slow.

Aside from even Prions in the meat, there are tons of chemical's, and hormones the animals are treated with in the process.
Cow's are literally the worse thing that can happen to a landcape, they are simply not a good environmental choice for the long run and are definatly not a good health choice for our diet.

Yeh, that's the funny part. All the fuck you I'll eat my meat people above don't even have a clue how fucking chemicaled out that meat is now. If they knew and saw what the cattle ranchers feed and inject into those cows to make the flesh look good on the supermarket shelves, they'd be freaked out.

People are so blind to the truth and so gullible to food marketers tricks.

And the government is concealing the reports. LOL. What's that tell you? Hello? That mad cow crap is in circulation and they're gonna let people die so the cattle industry doesn't lose money.

Keep believin its good for you. That's what the cattle barons love to hear.

:1orglaugh

Soylent Green - Real food made from real people.

thank you

interesting post Alien, here is an article on some poor kid who contracted new variant CJD, the human form of BSE

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/3139248.stm

When he wrote about it, Mad Cows was already going on in England.

But for his record some things he is definatly right about.
The system is poisoning us with chemicals.

However I think he had to much Faith in IBM Linux

All I know is that a lot of people contracted Hepatitis A from eating scallions and I'd rather get sick eating meat than eating scallions any day. :thumbsup Not to mention all the pesticides that are on and in the fruits and vegetables that you eat.

Plus my Grandfather was one of those "cattle barons". :winkwink:

Be a bit ironic if you hit a cow on 400 :1orglaugh :1orglaugh

LOL!

Though I shouldn't laugh TOO hard, I come close to hitting a deer at least once a day and I swear they must have some sort of brain disease to act like such idiots. :(

I rarely eat beef, mostly fish and chicken. but sometimes my body craves the protein it needs from meat such as a steak or a burger. i live in Milwaukee where RIGHT BESIDE the casino is a slaughter house. makes me sick to watch the cows walk their own "Green Mile" (if you will.) However, it is a circle of life......i dont hunt, but i know that its good to hunt.....once again, circle of life.........cant stop it.

I eat what ever I'm in the mood for.

some of you people are something else.

this week it's the cattle barons, wonder who/what it will be next week.:1orglaugh