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My great uncle certainly didn't, back in the 80s. Each cow had the predecessor to an RFID tag around its neck. When it entered the feeding station, food specifically mixed for that cow was delivered. (Dairy cows had a diet that maximized both health and the value of the milk. Beef cattle were optimized for health and meat value. But every cow was treated as a unique entity, using parental data, size and weight as primary inputs, with tweaks manually coded in.) He would probably have fed someone to one of the bulls if they'd suggested just throwing any old junk at the animals.

Ok, eccentric wetware hackers aren't exactly two a penny in the farming industry. But, then, that's part of what created the mess. Those growing corn sell it to ethanol producers, not other farmers or the food industry. The health consequences for farm animals in using the new alternatives to grass are a product of an abuse of the old alternatives to grass plus an abuse of antibiotics and other bulking-up agents ("angel dust" - PCP - is one farmers use, even where it's not legal, Clenbuterol is another).

If, instead of using illegal drugs, nonsensical feeds, steroids and antibiotics, they'd simply opted for a more sensible diet for each cow, they'd have had the same profits with none of the scandals. Higher initial costs (so it takes longer for the net profits to be the same), sure, plus having to think (always a problem for conservative, rural districts), but that's it.

http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=949053&cid=24814727:

[The "rapid" BSE test in question] can detect abnormal prions only if they exist in a relatively high concentration, and abnormal prions typically reach detectable concentrations only two to three months before an animal exhibits observable symptoms. The incubation period for BSE (i.e., from infection to observable symptoms) is two to eight yearsâ"the average being five yearsâ"and cattle younger than thirty months are rarely symptomatic. Because most cattle for slaughter in the United States go to market before they are twenty-four months old, ...

http://www.mad-cow.org/00/dec00_mid2_news.html:

Asked what scientific evidence he could give to reassure the public that a negative BSE test result was not a "false negative," Schimmel replied: "Nobody can do that." The report said it is usual for all biochemical tests used in medicine or animal welfare to be assessed against hundreds or even thousands of different samples to test how sensitive they are at detecting "true" negatives, and how specific they are at determining "true" positives.

However, this has not been done with any of the Commission-approved BSE tests, used in the context of assessing whether an apparently healthy animal is incubating the disease.

Cows are 100% dependent on humans for survival (put a cow in the wild and see how long it takes the local predator to feast on it),

I will assume that he's not a connosieur of brains of any sort? In Kentucky, supposedly the danger comes from eating squirrel brains. I know I've seen sheep's brains on menus before, so I guess that couldn't be so far-fetched.

Oh heck. I thought you were on BSE. I'm so confused.

Mad Cow is just a nickname for the disease. Many animals can suffer from it (or something much like it). Pigs and fowl may be no different. Click to read.

How about a plant that produces prions, the malformed proteins that cause CJD. A single grain of rice would be more than enough to kill you (in the long term). Prions are heat stable and would survive the cooking process quite nicely.

If it can be done, it will be done.

Smallpox (from memory) kills 30% of people infected which means that it can spread and cause utter devastation - the repeated smallpox epidemics of history shows that. The 1918-19 Spanish 'flu overall killed about 4% of people, but it had widely different mortality rates - in some parts of India it killed almost 1 in 2 of those who contracted it, and there are reports from the Canadian north of entire settlements being wiped out.

But then I think we're being terribly limited just thinking about viruses - what about bacteria? Look at the panic of the anthrax mailer in the US (an investigation that went very quiet after all the evidence pointed to a US military source) or the outbreak of foot and mouth here in the UK. And we're still not entirely sure what caused the massive outbreaks of the Black Death in the Middle Ages. it was probably some horrible variant of bubonic plague, but there is an outside chance it was something that came, killed and then retreated into the shadows.

But then again, the UK may have found the perfect biological weapon with BSE (mad cow disease); we've no idea how much of the population has ingested prions and how many will die terrible deaths over the next twenty years.

All we need is a way of putting a holstein on the top of an ICBM :)

Best wishes,
Mike.

"Prions are proteins that occur in the brains of all mammals so far studied. The normal function of prion proteins is not understood, but recent research on mice that lack the PrP gene -- which encodes the prion protein -- suggest that it protects the brain against dementia and other degenerative problems associated with old age. Sometimes, 'rogue' prions are produced by genetic mutations. This explains why some cases of CJD in humans are inherited."

http://www.mad-cow.org/~tom/prion_evol.html

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/madcow/prions.html

No, that's back to scrapie (I misremembered the name earlier) -- a disease of SHEEP (and goats, I see -- which would you prefer?), and in the same class as mad cow disease and the nasty New Guinea cannibal affliction called kuru caused by eating the brains of your ancestors (all are caused by prions, a sort of ultraprimitive protein "virus").

For the interested, even Ben Browder has written about this! ("We know you all: The Shippers, the Scapers, The SACC, Farscape Anonymous, CBOOL, FaDoP, The Royal Hynerian Guards, J&ASGTT, the TAC and many other societies. We know you by names and handles far to numerous to mention here.")

some tasty Mad Cow links:
http://www.mad-cow.org/~tom/prion_evol.html
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/madcow/prions.html

enjoy!

Mad Cow Disease has nothing to do with DNA. It is a prion which induces the disease, bovine spongiform encephalopathy. Basicly, it is a self-replicating protien - very well the same sort of thing which may have started life in the first place. In evolutionary terms, it is a transient - it cannot adapt or even defend itself from other things that adapt to it - but, meanwhile, it can run rampage. It causes damage by burrowing into nervous tissue, actually leaving visible holes in the brain. "Feeding beef to beef for a few generations" doesn't create the prion - but, it enabled it to spread, as the cows that ate infected cow remains contracted it themselves. It has nothing to do with genetic engineering - however, the cure possibly could.

- Rei

Most of our enemies would see it most efficient to use prions.

These are what scientists think are responsible for mad cow disease, as well as the Kuru disease from Africa. Supposedly, if used as a biological weapon (which is years away, if even possible), they could be targetted toward specific ethnic groups and people with certain attributes. (Yes, each word in the above is a link to a resource.)