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Safer Means Of Disposing Of Mad Cows
MissMarvel writes "A company claims to have a safer way to dispose of cows infected with Mad Cow Disease. It says that by using the kinds of chemicals that go into a drain-clearing product such as Drano, they can safely break down the suspected disease-causing proteins, known as prions.
The bodies of infected dead cattle are usually burned to destroy proteins these brain-wasting compounds."
I think back in the day when the beef tallow was used in industry more, they used to use this to render out the fat.
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
Indeed.
Somebody get that guy an ambulance!
Release carcinogens into the air by burning the cows...
Or dump toxins into the water table by dousing the cows with Drano...
Which is safer again?
I have been pwned because my
What you say? Article man have good writing! He say fire make bad pro... proteen... protan... bad stuff go away! If bad stuff get into cow, then cow must be burn, or man get sick too. And if man get sick, man brain not well work. Then would who understand man?!
~~~
I'd like to see how Sacred they think these cows are now.
"Get... in.... mah... BELLY!"
This might be important, but the real issue is early detection of this desease, avoiding cross contamination, etc. If you want to be scared, trace the life of a cow once it leaves the farm, and play spot the faults at every step along the way. Trust me... it is very, very easy.
I've heard it said that one hamburger can contain parts from 1000 head of cattle. When youre talking those sorts of numbers, the potential for outbreak, both for this and other diseases, is huge.
Disposing of the bodies is one thing, but far more important is early detection and isolation.
So why not a concentrated form of common household clorine bleach (sodium hypochlorite)? Yes, I know, it's toxic, but read on. Straight from the bottle, it dissolves hair in ten minutes, and will likewise break down other organic proteins. It's one of the ingredients in liquid drain opener products, in fact, along with lye. So in a concentrated form (remember, Clorox and its ilk is maybe 4% Na HypoCl), while it would produce fumes that would need to be contained, in the end the proteins could simply be flushed, and the bleach would eventually break down into salt water.
This sig no verb.
I'd like to the reports of those generic "researchers" they reference that say by merely burning the deceased and diseased, more cattle can be at risk. Sounds incredulous to me.
I just cleaned my drain.
Now i am not endangered anymore from deadly prions from my drain !!
That Everybody Loves Raymond has a quote for everything.
Am I the only person imagining massive vats of Dissolving Cow Soup, frothing mildly as more cows are poured in?
I am government man, come from the government. The government has sent me. -- G.I.R.
You'd be mad, too, if people thought you were food.
Brand the cattle, so everyone knows not to eat them, and let them wander around, slowly clearing the millions of landmines in the country.
They'll make mincemeat out of the landmine problems!
{groan}
My question - can you truely die in most circumstances from eating meat on an infected cow? I've heard arguements both ways... I would definately say you will stand a high chance of infection if you eat the brain matter - but what about well-cooked portions of the regular meat?
Is mad-cow a scare? The chances of eating a mad cow are extremely low. How about the chances of infection from eating various parts?
Can anyone clarify this further?
this has been known for at least the past 100 years. On a regular basis I take advantage of this when I chemically process my hair.
Sodium hyrdroxide, calcium hydroxide and lithium hydroxide are all very powerful bases. My question then becomes, what of all of the cow sludge that is left after you dissolve them in a big vat of lye or sodium hypochlorate?
What is there to do? I haven't any idea.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
- boiling
- heat treatment
- burning
- bleach
- radiation
- burying in soil for more than a year
It's not that these things don't degrade the prion- they all do, and reduce the infectivity, but it's just that in order for it not to be infectious, you have to get every last molecule, and most of them leave some behind. Last time I heard I think the approved technique to decontaminate a medical instrument was triple autoclave or something, but it wasn't guaranteed, and in most cases disposal was the prefered option; but that was some time ago, I'm not up on the current protocols.-WolfWithoutAClause
"Gravity is only a theory, not a fact!"I can't help but think of the scene in Point of No Return where Harvey Keitel as Victor the Cleaner dispatches at least one person by stuffing him into a toilet and pouring in a few quarts of some strong chemcial.
How about feeding them to wolves?
Why don't we just continue and do what we do today, make hamburgers of 'em. ? ;)
From Saturday Night Live
Timmy: (in front of yard-a-pult loaded with dog-shaped black trash bag) "Daddy, where's sparky going?"
Rick Moranis: "Sparky's going to heaven, Timmy." *pulls lever*
(trash bag goes flying into neighbor's yard)
Cole's Law: Thinly sliced cabbage
And then, all your dead cow are belong to us!
Cole's Law: Thinly sliced cabbage
the US uses mechanical picking devices to remove the last meat from the spine, rather than (prion dissolving) solvents used in other countries.
Anyone know whether Canada uses solvent or mechanical (or both)?
Also, at what temperature does the disease die? Enough to make your steak into a charcoal briquette? Will risk increase depending on how "rare" the meat is?
You know, the one that was supposed to take anything and turn it into oil?
Seems to me that company should've stepped in to take over this problem - or maybe its the same people/research group?
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
We have ours in landfill at the present. Bit of a biohazard?
A blog I run for the wealth
What a mOOving sight tho!
double rim shot. cymbal crash
anyway ... feeding meat to a vegetarien
...
..
is EVIL!
but since our society has evolved to status-quo
status prolly nothing is going to happen to solve the problem
but if you should feel to be infected stop eating
cows immidiately.
next you would have to get a hold of fresh squid
which you need to grill on a charcoal grill.
(note: air/sun drying the squid helps. try
to air/sun dry it near the ocean since there are
many helpful airborn bacteria near the ocean).
devouring one grilled squid a day should get
you the necessery "chemicals" to help you get
over your BSE "infection" inabout half a year
good luck.
Can someone confirm that the 400 cows slaughtered last week weren't actually buried according to news reports?
'cos if they had, you have a time bomb on your hands before the prions eventually reach the water-table, not to mention the long way up the food chain.
You have to incinerate the carcasses.
Oddly Draconis
Too cynical to live, too stubborn to die.
Using drain cleaner to dispose of potentially hazardous meat and bone is a method apparently pioneered by a Belgian dude named Andras Pandy, who used it to dispose of several hundred pounds' worth of potentially hazardous proteins.
Unfortunately, the proteins he needed to get rid of were formerly in the form of people. The hazard was getting caught, not getting sick, so YMMV.
(I know the radical peta'ns might equate cow slaughter with serial murder, but as a serial hamburger killer myself, I can't make that connection.)
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
The Law of Falling Bodies
New, Mad Cow strength draino!
Mom: How will I ever get this prime rib out of my sink drain?
Mad Cow: (Magically appears)
Mad Cow: With new Mad Cow Strength Draino!, it's Craaaaazy Strong!
Mom: Wow, thanks Mad Cow! Kisses cow on the cheek.
(Falls over confulsing)
(Cow flys off)
(Fade out)
(Cue Outback Commercial)
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www.fairtax.org
Some Germans say "It is noteworthy that there are reports regarding the failure of prion inactivation after short-term exposure to temperatures up to 600 C (Brown et al., 2000)."
Long-term exposure under conditions which reduce peptides to simpler molecules (such as thermal depolymerization) would appear to have a similar effect to chemical depolymerization by alkalai, with the added bonus that amino acids would be converted to other molecules which cannot bind into the prion configuration.
Drano, which contains lots of nifty sodium hydroxide, does a real number on aluminum cans. Did you know aluminum cans have a plastic liner inside them? I performed this neat "experiment" to find out for myself: (don't try this yourself):
- Get a clean peanut butter jar large enough to contain a 12 oz aluminum soda can.
- Poke a pencil-sized hole in the jar's lid.
- Get a 12 oz soda can and scrape a good bit of the paint off the outside can.
- GO OUTSIDE, WEARING PROTECTIVE GEAR.
- Carefully mix up an horrendously strong batch of drano and water. Having enough drano so that it all can't dissolve is a good thing.
- Carefully place the soda can in the PB jar, and fill it with the drano syrup.
- Quickly screw the lid on the PB jar, and get upwind quickly.
- As the NaOH eats away the aluminum, large quantities of hydrogen and heat are produced.
- When all the fun is over and the jar has cooled, neutralize the solution with a convenient acid - vinegar, orange juice, etc. and dispose of properly.
When I did this, I got a very strong odor of ammonia. Can anyone explain where it came from? I'm guessing the H2 combined with atmospheric N2, but I'm no chemist.Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
Good theory, but very doubtful... N2 is way too stable to just react with another molecule.
However, very concentrated NaOH sorta smells ammonia-like... if you smell it, it'll probably burn your nose (don't try sniffing Drano at home).
"Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former." -- Albert Einstein
Let's get some hydrocarbons out of them old bovines! Check the .sig! If it'll work for turkey guts, it'll work for mad cows too!
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I'd rather just pay a little bit extra (or maybe even a bit less, plus a smidge of extra effort) to buy meat from a ranch that takes good enough care of their cows that they don't get sick very often. A ranch like this is also more likely to notice if a cow does get sick, and take care of it.
You can make this decision too: "I won't eat animals that were raised in a box." Your food comes from living things, have some respect for it.
How can the prion be heatproof? Surely there is _some_ temperature that will destroy it. You mean that it's resistant to high temperatures that would denature most other proteins. What matters is whether there is a temperature hot enough to destroy the prion but cold enough not to damage medical instruments.
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
But experimentally, if you build a little bonfire, burn an infected animal, take the ash and inject it into mouse brains- they get BSE. The protein is incredibly hardy.
-WolfWithoutAClause
"Gravity is only a theory, not a fact!"