Slashdot Mirror
Creating Prion-Free Cows
Science Daily is reporting that the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Agricultural Research Service (ARS) is reporting positive results from a recent study designed to create genetically engineered prion-free cattle. From the article: "ARS studied eight Holstein males that were developed by Hematech Inc., a pharmaceutical research company based in Sioux Falls, S.D. The evaluation of the prion-free cattle was led by veterinary medical officer Juergen Richt of ARS' National Animal Disease Center (NADC) in Ames, Iowa. The evaluation revealed no apparent developmental abnormalities in the prion-free cattle."
This is great! Now we can go back to feeding the cows a healthy diet of dead sheep, which was how the whole "mad cow" thing started.
... or you could just not feed them parts of their dead relatives?
I confess; I had to look up what a prion is.
A +prions%3F&btnG=Search
I'm so embarrassed.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=define%3
How many escape pods are there? "NONE,SIR!" You counted them? "TWICE, SIR!"
From Wikipedia: "a type of infectious agent made only of protein."
"Mad cow disease" is a prion disease.
'Thats they exact same thing a banana wrench monkey.'
Oh, that was "prion"? I was trying to figure out how cows were getting "pron", and why we'd want to take it away from them anyway.
or Mad Cow Disease for those of you like myself who had no idea what the headline was about.
The actual article headline "Mad Cow Breakthrough?" really should have been followed by a story about mad cow scientists were developing a doomsday weapon to destroy humanity, or that mad cow armies were breaking through our outer defense perimeter or some such. Would have been much more interesting.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
What is so new in those cows? Two heads? Fallout style?
"an experienced, industrious, ambitious, and often, quite often, picturesque liar" - Mark Twain
The farmers feed the cows RENDERED cow feed made in big factories. It's very easy to stop the factories rendering down cows and sheep into protein supplements.
Even a break of feeding rendered meat for 1 complete cow generation would clear the contamination out.
The problem is the renderers have a strong lobby group and want to continue the practice, however unsafe, so they got a compromise. Instead they promise to only feed dead cows and sheep that were healthy. So they continue to feed infected meat to cows, just as long as the prion infection was at a too early stage to be detected. The US executive branch has gone along with this 'voluntary' code and practically no inspections are made to check it's being done.
It's why I don't eat US beef, because the US views the problem as something to fix in the PR dept., not something to fix on the farm.
Yet it's so trivial to fix, switch to vegetation based protein supplements for 1 generation of cattle, and poof the problems gone.
Me and my fellow group, the PRIONIC SIX, strongly oppose this development.
-- prionic6
ARS, with assistance from researchers at Hematech and the University of Texas, evaluated the cattle using careful observation, post-mortem examination of two of the animals ...I'd be livid!
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
Answer
Syllable 0.62 is here at last!!!
I'd rather eat meat and die young. Pigs taste good.
As for environmental factors, the planet will do just fine all by itself. Until the sun explodes and destroys it, so I guess we'd better build some big engines.
In 2005 a controversial paper in The Lancet introduced a theory that BSE might have originated in British cattle when they ate imported animal feed that included infected human remains from Hindu funeral ceremonies in India.
Bovine spongiform encephalopathy
This theory has some merit because scrapie from sheep does not appear to infect people, whereas BSE from cattle does.
Reduce, reuse, cycle
"Oh nos! Genetically modified aminals! What if they get into the food supply?! DO YOU WANT TO HAVE A BABY WITH TWO HEADS?!?!?! You can't predict what might happen so don't let the evil government/corporations/boogeymen use us as their GM guinea pigs!"
So how long until we get a new study that says Prions were indeed good things, and should have been left in our meat.
From TFA: "Prions are proteins that are naturally produced in animals."
Hmm... Removing natural things... Nope, doesn't sound like a good idea to me. I just can't wait until they find out that Prions actually helped prevent cancer or something and everyone on the planet now has a timebomb in their body.
Seriously, they'd better do some SERIOUS studies on this before feeding this crap to me.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
A google search will tell you, but so will the fucking article.
*sigh*
Its posts like these that make me consider moving to digg.
As some other posters noted, these prions improve/allow memory. One must wonder, if they can do this with cattle, how long it is until they figure out how to do it to humans...
/tinfoilhat
Great Intellect...
...is tasty!
t icleEEF238D9C90E4B2989F5E473D3145A16.asp
In all seriousness, you make a good point. BSE was first spotted among the cannibals of Papua New Guinea (where eating of the dead was a sign of respect).
http://www.gwinnettdailyonline.com/GDP/archive/ar
Here are a ton of articles on BSE & vCJD:
http://www.newscientist.com/channel/health/bse
That's the PRIONs 'memory' you're talking about. It has a good memory that replicates whether its Bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) prion or a Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD). Not our memory!
I think you've been eating too much beef.
An important point is that a lot of work on artificial/cultured muscle research is dependent on using fluids derived from cows as a growth medium, both from a compatibility and cost standpoint. However, a large barrier to commercial artificial meat research/production is keeping that fluid free of prions both in a small lab setting as well as in industrial quantities. This is the reason why when those scientists cultured meat and cooked it, they weren't allowed to eat it due to prion safety.
If they can sucessfully remove prion issues, then commercial artificial meat is a real possibility (though those issues dissappear once the culture medium fluid can be reliably and cost effectively made through wholely artificial means).
I for one welcome our vat-grown meat progenitors.
....but in it's place will despressed and miserable cow disease.
Didn't they make a movie about that?
No, I guess that was mind control. Black power, Brother!
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
A bigger worry is the fact that a company (read capitalism) will be holding the patents on our food supply. Much like what big agra has on corn, soybeans, etc.
I too wondered why "big science" would try to come up with a way to create cattle that can still be fed 'cannibal chow' without getting sick, instead of just changing the feed to something healthy, when I realised there are no IP licensing rights for natural, healthy cattle. This 'super cow' is surely patentable :(
My other disappointment is that so much time & resourcefulness was spent on this rather than a way to prevent prion diease from taking it's toll on the untold people who have eaten infected 'industrial-beef' through fast food & other sources but won't show symptoms for many years.
... it doesn't work everywhere. I'd rather eat a certain amount of meat which I can produce locally, than buy in lots of vegetables that I can't. Not all farmland is arable.
I can't help but think it's more than a coincidence that most of the vegetarians and all of the vegans I know always look skinny and underfed, and seem to be allergic to lots of things. They also seem to be ill with something nearly all the time. I don't know if anyone else has noticed, but vegans tend to have a particularly unhealthy pallor, a kind of pale shiny skin thing going on.
It's somewhat of a self-selecting group though; in order to sustain being a vegetarian, you need a better overall knowledge of nutrition that your average person. It's perfectly possible to eat a balanced proper diet including meat, in fact it's probably easier to get the right amount of protein that way - but it's also a lot easier to have a fat-filled life of lard, burger and sausages than as a vegetarian. Bad nutrition does indeed lead to a shorter lifespan.
Still, as you say, there's other good reasons to be a vegetarian and i've no doubt that veggies do have much better nutrition than average.
Remember kids, it's all fun and games until someone commits wholesale galactic genocide.
my friend died a few years ago with this terrible disease, did it stop me from eating beef ... only until i reliesed i cant avoid the stuff..
If that does not sound like wishful thinking, I don't know what does. Also keep in mind that they have a really strong interest in not finding anything....
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
What is concerning is that it's great that they have removed the coding for the cows to create Prions. It's even amazing that thus far they are healthy and alive. What is a bit worrisome is that we do not know what potential for other diseases or impacts may result from modifying the genetic code of a creature that evolved that code over tens of thousands of years. We cannot see this as a panacea. Prions may have been there at some point for a reason. Perhaps not. I'm not trying to be a Luddite, but I would be cautious before jumping for joy.
Cally
--Cally
showing vegetarians lived 10-15% longer
Yeah, but smug self-satisfaction knocks about 10% off the lifespan, provided you're not punched by an offended meat-eater beforehand. So it's basically a wash.
Many plants are full of "natural" toxins and pesticides. I just bought some dried beans and my cookbook warned that they would make me very sick if they were not cooked properly, which destroys the toxins.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
Isn't Prion the name of that hybrid fuel car from Toyota? I didn't think it was big enough to drive cows around in anyway...
"All those moments, will be lost in time...like tears in rain..."
wouldn't you have to ensure it has no proteins of any type.
Now, if the article title/blurb said "no mad-cow prions", I wouldn't be so picky, but this said no prions, without qualifier.
"Aye, the cow aint got no prions! 'course 'ees dead, but thar be no prions in that thar cow!"
(yes, I read TFA, I know they meant mad-cow prions, not prions in general).
34486853790
Connection too slow for X forwarding? Try "ssh -CX user@host"
My fiancee and I would like to reduce the amount of meat in our diet. However, she has a severe allergy to nutritionally significant amounts of soy protein (especially tofu), and a serious (but not as severe) allergy to most other legumes (peanuts being least serious, but even then, she could not subsist on peanut protein alone). How would she go about getting the proper amounts and kinds of protein into her diet without soy or legumes?
She has asked this question of vegans and vegetarians in the past. The usual response has been on the lines of "go away, troll", as they think that she's just presenting them with an impossible situation in order to justify her eating of meat. If there is a reasonable answer, we would genuinely love to hear it.
We can believe in you for 3 minutes, but beyond that, even the King of All Cosmos can't be expected to wait.
Prions are those things Scientologist have been warning us about.
If we flush them all out, we are much healthier.
"i've no doubt that veggies do have much better nutrition than average."
I'm not trying to be unhelpfull, but nearly every vegetarian I've known looks like death warmed over.
Dear AC parent:
WHOOOOOOSH!
Logically it appears changing diet is the one thing you haven't tried. Maybe you're the one to discover your family is genetically of a blood group A, protein dependent stock..
:-). I need exercise, even if it's just walking outside for an hour..
..
Alternatively, you may be like me. I've spent the last few weeks working away at the a project, nil exercise. The result is that I'll have to work quite hard as soon as this is over, before there's no difference in width between my shoulders and my gut
Happy New Year
Insert
only a few /known/.
That's the key factor here. With out current knowledge/tech, prions are still a challange to verify. Additionally, we are not sure which proteins would have stable conformations that would make them prions. Therefore, with our tech as it is now, we would have to eliminate all proteins.
34486853790
Connection too slow for X forwarding? Try "ssh -CX user@host"
The prions that cause BSE are externally introduced through cattle feed. You'd have to have all the components of cattle feed be produced from prion free animals also. Not likely unless all cattle feed was constantly tested for the presence of any prions at all.
-Eric
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Normal high tempurature sterialization of surgical instruments that have been used for brain surgury doesn't destroy prions. You have to use more exotic techniques that are a little rougher on surgical instruments. It's a big problem for hospitals. So mere cooking wouldn't affect prions.
In America not one person had died from MAD cow disease, this will likely only lead to more laziness so we can all have cheaper food. On another note, I guess the lactating men from Europe can eat beef again?
Yeah, I can't figure out whether a Prion is a Honda or a Ford. I think my grandma had one...
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
What sort of pri0n do cows watch anyways?
Out of curiosity, what is the purpose of getting your protein from eggs?
I mean, if you're morally opposed to eating chickens, why wouldn't you be opposed to eating their abortions?
Do daemons dream of electric sleep()?
Prion-free cows have already been invented; they're called vegetables. ...which taste absolutely nothing like beef. What's the point of living longer if you're stuck eating rabbit food?
---
DRM is like antifreeze, to the MPAA/RIAA it's sweet, to the consumers it's poison.
There is nothing shameful about learning.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
Also there *ARE* good tests to determine the ESB both faster than the biopsy and not needing to put down the cow, much better than clinical observations.
Intensive research has been done in German and Swiss laboratories. The first test working on live animal has been developped in Göttingen, Germany. Thus sadly, the information is only available in the German version of wikipedia. (Though the german article mentions a later Texan discovery).
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
You'd be surprised how products in modern culture use bovine byproducts- many kinds of foods, cosmetics, leather clothing, medicine... I saw a list of several hundred once. To avoid such you basically have to back to the pre-20th century where people made most of their own stuff.
Primates (tested on monkeys, very likely true for humans) who subsist at near-starvation levels of calorie intake life significantly longer than those that eat "normal" amounts of calories. Why aren't you starving yourself?
Also, if meatless diets are so obviously better for your health, why do so few health experts choose meatless diets for themselves? Perhaps the evidence is not as clear as you think it is.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
It's not about creating prion-free cattle. It's about cheap meat. The meat industry is all about high density feedlots for cattle, pigs, and chickens. It's all about providing you with the cheapest meat, not necessarily the safest for you or the meat animals. The industry players want you to think that cattle spend all of their days frollicking on the range and munching on grass instead of being cooped up in their own shit and forced to eat antibiotics so they can eat corn which they did not evolve to eat. I'm a devout omnivore and won't stop eating meat, so those more rabidly zealous vegans can get stuffed. I can and will however eat safer and better raised meat.
Read Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma . It has a fascinating account of Joel Salatin and his Polyface Farms. You can have a win-win situation between raising meat animals and the enviroment. Finally, everything you ever wanted to know about high density feedlots can be found in cartoon format at The Meatrix.
"You'll get nothing, and you'll like it!"
It's a recent piece - this lasts an hour I think, but it's worth it.
r /DD062206.mp3
/very/ short version is (listen, really), that they can only change genes crudely, you don't know what else has changed along with the intended one. The lack of controls, and the effects, will shock you. And this is recent, say, end of 2005.
http://media.libsyn.com/media/deconstructingdinne
A
Someday we'll all be negroes
The Japanese in Japan live pretty long - and most of the guys smoke, drink beer, work long hours, don't exercise that much. The Japanese americans don't fare as well so it's probably diet or environment and not genetic.
From what I see, humans can survive[1] as vegetarians (they need to be careful to eat enough of X etc etc), but they thrive on fish.
So I think I'll keep eating fish as long as it doesn't have too much mercury in it ( drinking green tea is probably good for you too).
Trouble is we are running out of fish (modern fishing is _broken_. Look up "bycatch" - throwing away _dead/crippled_ 70-90% of what we catch is immoral), and our seas are getting more and more polluted. We need to be a LOT less wasteful.
[1] Being vegetarian is not "normal" for humans. You need special diets to do well - not as silly as those vegetarian diets cats but still silly nonetheless... It's not just for fun that chimps dig out termites and eat them.
Most types of vegetation aren't that nutrient dense - so strict herbivores have to spend a lot of time eating.
I ate vegan (only non-animal products) for a while. I loved how everything was low on fat; it made me feel energetic, and I lost about 5 kilos in the first couple of weeks, and stayed on my lower weight (in case you're wondering: both weights were considered good). However, now that it's dark and gloomy outside, I find I like to eat heavier food, so I'm back on cheese and meat. Still, I wanted to share some of the links I collected while cooking vegan food:
Veganism in a Nutshell -- The Vegetarian Resource Group
PCRM >> Clinical Research >> Diabetes: Can a Vegan Diet Reverse Diabetes?
Vegetarians in Paradise/ Diabetes Diet/Diabetes Prevention
Strict Vegan Diets May Be Dangerous, Especially for Expectant Mothers and Children
My general verdict about vegan cooking is that it's fun, it's healthy as long as you counter the deficiencies you'll develop (mainly vitamin B12), and it's good for the planet and the animals.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
What scares me about this is that in a few years, they'll probably declare prion-free, genetically engineered cattle safe to eat, and then 20 years from now half the population is going to develop something worse than CJD. I'm fine with them doing this stuff for research, but I don't like the idea that we're feeding livestock genetically engineered food because the next step is going to be feeding people genetically engineered food. Our understanding of biochemistry is still so full of holes and we're so short-sighted, we end up killing ourselves and our planet without proper forethought and consideration.
Except many of the persons infected with BSE prions in England were home gardeners who used animal fertilizer on their plants. So being a vegan doesn't prevent you from getting the disease, it just makes you a little more smug than the rest of us who don't have the will power to resist our natural appetites.
Good heavens Miss Sakamoto - you're beautiful!
... that I only eat free range bison.
In the Bible, Abel was a peaceful animal-herder, and Cain was the homicidal vegetarian. What's up with that, huh?
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Take one for a hike sometime. It's pretty funny.
It's HARD to be a good vegetarian. You have to know a lot about nutrition and carefully manage your diet. It's quite possible to do, and I know some vegetarians who are disgustingly fit, but if you don't you'll look like death until someone does you the favour of force feeding you a burger. Which you'll eat as if it were crack because your body is screaming out for it.
It is wonderful how they are figuring out to do things the wrong way like making it so they can feed cows to cows without fears of the cows on either end being mad.
One might wonder what potential effects there may be hidden down the road from knocking out the at gene. There may be garbage in the DNA, but there are also a lot of important pairs and scientists don't really understand the ramifications of playing with them. I'm all for technology, I enjoy the internet, but I'm not going to be their guinea pig.
Of course, this won't help with preserving genetic diversity and heritage breeds, bio-diversity, issues with mono-culturing, plagues, etc. What it will do is give some company the ability to own the genetics of cattle so that farmers have to pay the corporation every time we breed an animal much like is being done with plant genetics.
If the corp is smart they'll copyright the genes instead of patenting them since that monopoly lasts longer. Or they can just screw around with the patent system more to extend the patents to forever minus a day.
Me, I'll continue to breed my own livestock, grown clown-free, sans-genetic modifications and raised on pasture. I would suggest consumers get to know their local farmers who can be a source of high quality foods as well as keeping dollars in the local economy.
If posts like that makes him want to switch to digg. digg comments will want to make him "switch off his Internet".
[alk]
I'd be willing to bet more people have died from e. coli in their salad than have died from BSE.
According to wikipedia, 157 people worldwide are known to have contracted BSE. It says the following about the Sept spinach outbreak in the US: "It would lead to 199 infections, three deaths, and thirty-one kidney failures by October 6, 2006." And that's just a single outbreak in a single first world country that lasted a single month. You can say maybe we just don't know about a lot of people who died from BSE, but the same is true of e. coli.
Or how about the fact that at least 555 people contracted Hepatits A from green onions in a single outbreak in Pennsylvania in 2003? Or the 2000 outbreak of salmonella in brean sprouts? Or maybe the 3000 people who got sick from salmonella ice cream in a single outbreak in 1994? Or the 1985 outbreak of listeria in cheese in southern California that led to 47 deaths?
I pulled all of these from wikipedia. And yes, it's very true that there are plenty of outbreaks of the same thing in meat. Unlike you, I'm not posting this as a public display of smugness and condescension. I'm simply pointing out that the real danger lies in eating food that other people grow and prepare. Not that you'd be free of problems even if you ate only food that grew in your own garden.
The fact of the matter is this - living is dangerous. If you must worry, worry about getting hit by a drunk driver on your way home from a New Year's Eve party. It's several orders of magnitude more likely to happen than dying from any foodborne illness.
... who thought, "And why do we need pr0n-free cows again?"
Web 2.0 == Giant Blogspam Circle Jerk
I'm happy that we're *this close* [holds hooves together a couple millimeters apart] to finally splitting the cow atom. It's been a long road of discovery, from the Heifersburg uncertainty principle (you can have a cow, or a burger, but not both) to the realization that it is possible to cross a cattle grating, with careful quantized footing and a lot of federal funding.
The next big challenge: Sub-atomic cow fusion, and bringing subjugation to the lemur foe! Mooooo!
Any sufficiently advanced technology is insufficiently documented.
You might want to see this then. Just hope that space has diesel stations...
"Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master."
Yeah it's quite possible for cats to survive on special vegetarian diets too. That doesn't make those the best diets for them.
;).
Have to say the Burger + Big Cola + Large Fries diet + snacks is worse
Still, I suspect that a diet of burgers (minus the TFAs) and plain water won't be that bad, and it's actually the large amounts of sugar water and fries that do most of the damage.
Question: How is it good for the animals? If everyone was a vegetarian we wouldn't have _any_ farm animals. Infact, if everyone switched to not eating meat, the only choice for farmers would be to slaughter their remaining livestock.
Glad to know I wasn't the only one who thought of that same thing when I read the PP
I'm sure many people that eat meat (like myself) just do it because it's more healthy than not eating meat -- not because we don't have the will power.
Having to come up with a vegetarian diet which is as healthy as my current diet would probably be very hard.
Don't they usually start out without prions? You have to infect them.
That depends on whether you define "prion" to mean "the prion protien" or "the prion protien folded into the pathological shape".
These are cows with the prion protien gene "knocked out" so the protien is not produced. They are thus "prion free" by the first definition.
They will also remain prion free (except for the introduced prions) by the second definition as well, since they won't amplify the prions by folding more instances of the protein into the same shape.
I went cow-shopping and I remember prions were strictly an option.
Check the basic option package - it's there as "protein feed suplement".
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
can still be exposed to prions from external
Check out protein folding and how one prion causes other proteins to fold wrong. sources and continue to produce prions.
Prions don't just misfold ANY old protein. They cause a PARTICLUAR protien to fold wrong. These cows have been altered so they don't MAKE that protein.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
If you're still thinking "hell, yeah, what the fuck!" I suggest you go speak to someone with personal experience of stroke. (Of course meat eating's a risk factor for a whole range of funky diseases; the biggies are of course cancer and heart disease. Believe me, you do not want to die from stomach or bowel cancer.
That said, (a) of course, do whatever you want; (b) bacon was far, far, far harder to stop eating than beefburgers or steak. The other problem is that I was forced to eat lots of hideously over-cooked vegetables as a child, with the result that I have a visceral (literally!) dislike of cabbage, sprouts, cauliflower etc - even the smell makes me gag - so unless I make an effort, I eat a lot of cheese and egg-based stuff.
Everything I needed to know about life, I learnt from Blake's Seven
Ok, so BSE damages prions which leads to all the characteristics of the disease. No prions, no disease. But does that necessarily mean no infection?
BSE can be passed to humans. Is it possible that these genetically modified cows are just modern day Typhoid Marys?
--JoeProgram Intellivision!
I've never made any particular effort to have a "balanced diet" - I eat what I want, I feel guilty when I eat too much chocolate or rice pudding, protein? carbs? vitamins? Never bothered me, and I don't seem to be ill or unwell. In fact in the early days when I "relapsed" many times was when I really noticed how unwell I felt for a day or two after eating meat, compared to how I felt when meat-free. The main difference being not having realised how semi-constipated I was most of the time.
Everything I needed to know about life, I learnt from Blake's Seven
Yeah, so what? What's your point? Don't eat poisonous stuff. I'm allergic to new-age hippy "it's more natural" crap. Though at the time of writing I see 17 replies, overwhelming negative, & the original post is modded 1 (insightful)... and now I just pissed off the couple of people who might have modded up. Fortunately my /. karma's not that big a deal for me ;)
Everything I needed to know about life, I learnt from Blake's Seven
Factory-style production and distribution of food makes bad food, in my opinion.
I prefer to eat locally raised meat and produce. It tastes better. But the majority of people are just sucking down whatever overprocessed swill is cheap at walmart this week, so my choices won't make much difference on a global scale.
I wish everyone had to kill their own food or go hungry...
This is a little bit silly. Doctors are people, too-- just because there's evidence for something doesn't mean they're all going to live perfect evidence-based lives. There are fat doctors, alcoholic doctors, and doctors who smoke, and the evidence for those things being unhealthy is well beyond doubt by this point.
What would be interesting to see is what percentage of doctors do all of those things compared to the general population.
Will organisms that eat BSE-infested beef eventually die off? The chances of getting sick from it are infinitestimally small. Somebody run the numbers, but my guess is more genertic information is transmitted by the increased reproductive success of not living near a volcano or subduction zone, or not getting hit by an asteroid, or not gorging on 3000-calorie breakfasts
Give a man a fish and you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, and he'll say "WHERE'S MY FISH, YOU IDIOT?"
I don't know what "CR" or "boutique" are. I don't think bacteria are the problem, anyway. Didn't you read the post?
More healthy? It depends on what you mean by that term.
With every diet there's a trade-off. You may be getting slightly bigger boost of available nutrients by eating meat, but coming up with a vegetarian diet that clogs your arteries, stresses your kidneys, and acidifies your blood as much as a meat-centric diet does would be very hard indeed. The fact is that (a) you don't need all that much iron, Vitamin B12, etc., and supplements abound; (b) protein should be only around 5% of your dietary intake; and (c) as a meat-eater you're probably not getting nearly enough fiber. Check out The China Study for more.
I've personally chosen to stop eating all animal products despite the extra effort required. On the one hand both my father and grandfather were avid meat-eaters, and both died in their mid-50's from heart attacks brought on by arterial congestion. So I'm partially driven by my natural wish to be around longer than another 15 years. But also, as an aware person desiring harmony I find that meat-eating is simply incompatible with my knowledge and understanding, and hinders the development of deeper compassion.
Regardless of whether or not meat can be digested by humans, I feel that since I am in an elite position to make a choice then I should choose wisely and compassionately. The more deeply I seek to understand myself and the world, and the more I understand about human physiology, the more impossible it becomes to justify eating meat or dairy. Meat production is cruel, wasteful, and polluting. Knowing this, I see meat-eating as a habit a lot like smoking: It's an unhealthy practice that supports a vile industry, and therefore fosters personal denial.
I understand that very few people are apt to cease their pleasurable habits, but I like the challenge, and I feel clearer in every way - intestinally, spiritually, mentally.
From my personal experience I believe that will-power is a central issue, but in your case your beliefs are the blocker - not willpower. For the moment your will is short-circuited by the belief that meat-eating is necessary and good. If you knew or felt differently about meat-eating, or were more invested in animal welfare and environmental issues, your willpower would presumably be directed differently. Your belief that meat-eating is "more healthy" - likely augmented by cultural conditioning, sentimental attachment to the familiar, and the sensual pleasure associated with meat-eating - trumps will altogether.
If people understood what their bodies needed, were more capable of denying themselves the pleasurable sensations associated with meat and dairy consumption, and were more aware of the devastation and suffering caused by meat-production... well, it would be a much kinder and more viable world. Sustainability is a big issue facing the world, and one of the most straightforward solutions -- reducing meat consumption -- isn't all that easy! Humans are easily hooked, and the industry is hooking more of them all the time.
I wasn't born with a vegan spoon in my hand. I've been on a totally vegan diet now for only 14 months, but I've considered myself a "vegetarian" (if dairy, eggs, and fish are vegetables) for 20 years. As recently as 20 months ago, I would sometimes backslide and eat meat every so often. But at this point I'm developmentally beyond all chance of recidivism. What happened? I've been spending time at Farm Sanctuary working with animals, giving technical assistance to environmental organizations, and practicing meditation. All these experiences have helped me to understand the issue more directly, more deeply, and more broadly. The extra effort required to cook thoroughly nutritious vegan meals is more than made-up-for by the benefits of clarity, energy, and well-being that I feel every day.
I should disclaim that I am a co-host of Vegan Radio, and webmaster of both Vegani
-- thinkyhead software and media
Since cows are now able to be bred prion-free, that doesn't fix the other possible vectors for prion contamination. If my biology is correct: Prions are malformed proteins. Can such malformed proteings be cause by genetic mutations from other sources? Even though a BSE-resistant cow has been bred to be 'free' of prions, and the genetic code that causes malformed prions to be created by biological processes withint the cow, can the genetic struture of a BSE-resistant cow mutate through some other avenue, such as naturally occurring radioisotopes (You anti-nuclear assclowns can shut up. Radioisotopes [and other mutagenic compounds] *DO* occurr naturally in harmful amounts in the Earth--- long before reactors and nuclear weapons existed), ultraviolet radiation, free radicals, and other naturally occurring mutagenic compounds? In order to create a truly BSE-free heifer, wouldn't you need to eliminate all possible mutagenic compound exposure vectors? Disclaimer: If my biology is incorrect or inaccurrate, I am only human.
Knowing Google's lust for data collection, the Soviet Union is still alive and well inside the psyche of Sergey Brin....
Your comment about "diet experts" is pretty meaningless; firstly, what's your source (and whose definition of "expert" are they using?) Secondly, it's an appeal-to-authority argument.
Everything I needed to know about life, I learnt from Blake's Seven
In my day. . .
Cows ate grass.
Re: fish: how will you know what the mercury levels are? (not saying "don't do it", just curious.) I do drink green tea, again I started doing it for health reasons and not liking it, but then a friend came back from 9 months in Beijing learning Mandarin with a couple of pots of green tea which were absolutely *delicious*. I drink a cup or two most days. The biggest health benefit there AFAIK inhibition of angiogenesis, which slows the growth of tumours as it prevents the growth factors they produce from causing new blood vessels to grow towards and around the tumour. There's stuff about antioxidents in the marketing material, I don't know yet whether that (the a/o hype) is real or junk science yet. There's a whiff of cosmetics advertising about some of that "neutralizes harmful free radicals" stuff. (Total tangent, if you want to understand the status of science in society today, pick up a copy of a major women's glossy like Cosmo and read every cosmetic ad, cover to cover. Now recoil in horror despair. Have a nice day :)
Everything I needed to know about life, I learnt from Blake's Seven
Anyway, (a) no-one in the UK got mad cow disease; they got Creuzfeld-Jakob Disease; (b) AFAIK the total number of cases is about 150, in 15 years, in a country with a population of 60,000,000. That's a good working definition of "statistically insignificant" ;)
Everything I needed to know about life, I learnt from Blake's Seven
Gary Larson would have a field day with this...
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Yeah, but so what? BSE isn't what's killing meat-eaters 10 years before the veggies. It's cancer, heart disease, and stroke.
Everything I needed to know about life, I learnt from Blake's Seven
A prion is an 'infectious' protein which causes similar proteins to change their structure, rather like seeding a supersaturated solution. What has been done is to clone cattle which lack the protein which could be altered by the prion.
Well, the splotch of partially spoiled mayo might have something to do with it too.
I saw a vegetarian cat once. I'm pretty sure it was begging me to put it out of its misery.
It seems to me that extreme, specialized diets are the least likely to actually be healthy. Vegetarianism and veganism are pretty extreme and very specialized. So is the burger/fries/pop diet. I also notice that between soy milk, tofu, soy cheese substitute, etc. you can have soy as most of your diet... that doesn't appeal to me any more than having corn syrup in everything does.
You eat mostly cheese and egg-based stuff? That ain't vegetarian, that's meat by-product-ism. Cheese is probably worse for you than yummy high-fat prime beef; it's high fat (much of it saturated) and very high in sodium.
I have an educated guess regarding your findings: I think there is a correlation inbetween the "living 10-15% longer" factor and the "paying attention to what you stick in your pie hole" factor. I'm of the firm belief that all diets (vegetarian, Atkins, etc) are successful for the latter reason rather than a complex biological one.
I'm thinking of marketing a Prime diet, where you only have to pay attention to what you eat on prime-numbered days of the month. I'll call you from my yacht filled with bikini babes in a few months and let you know how it worked out.
As far as relevance, the comment is directed at the PP's opener of how vegetables are good because they are prion-free.
I first heard of calorific restriction as the result of a study on monkeys. It was publicized so much that there were follow-up articles about people who intended to follow such a diet. I'm surprised you missed all that publicity.
Your "appeal to authority" bit made me laugh. It is obvious to the intelligent person that if compelling information existed which demonstrates that a meatless diet significantly extended human lifespan, then a noticeable number of persons whose careers are dedicated to extending human lifespan (physicians) would practice such a diet.
I know several physicians. They all eat meat. They feed meat to their children. They recommend others eat meat.
If you think expert opinions regarding extremely complex subjects, such as human metabolism, are meaningless, you must have a hard time functioning in the world. I admire your sense of skepticism, but scoff at your lack of pragmatism.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
I couldn't access the mentioned paper, but I found another paper that I assume that review cited (Lindquist worked on both of them). The summary "CPEB prions might function in the formation of long-term memory" is probably though not certainly taken from:
R L&_udi=B6WSN-4C5RJXX-C&_coverDate=12%2F26%2F2003&_ alid=516758008&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_qd=1&_c di=7051&_sort=d&view=c&_acct=C000051401&_version=1 &_urlVersion=0&_userid=1082852&md5=817b088d824d789 e3c68039a6e013561
i ?itool=AbstractPlus-def&PrId=3580&uid=12058449&db= pubmed&url=http://joi.jlc.jst.go.jp/JST.JSTAGE/jts /27.69?from=PubMed
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleU
which talks about CPEB in Aplysia californica, the California sea slug. The results are pretty interesting, but it's unclear whether they apply to higher organisms. I haven't yet found anything where they test this in mice, but that doesn't mean the paper doesn't exist.
Another paper at
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/utils/fref.fcg
found that: "Whereas the Zurich I Prnp null mice, as well as mice from a later PrP knockout line designated Edinburgh Prnp -/- (Manson et al., 1994) were clinically healthy, mice of other knockout lines, for example Nagasaki Prnp-/- (Sakaguchi et al., 1996) came down with ataxia and less of cerebellar Purkinje cells at 6-12 months of age. In the Zurich I and Edinburgh mice only the PrP open reading frame (ORF) was ablated or interrupted, while the lines developing ataxia had deletions extending from within the second Prnp intron to the 3' non-coding region [which runs into another gene called Doppel]."
To summarize: at this moment it doesn't seem that taking out only the coding region of PrP wrecks anything blatantly obvious in mice (though other papers I haven't cited show some other effects, not all of them neuro).
The floggings will stop when morale improves.
I do eat meat. I tried vegetarianism for a while and began to waste away. My doctor told me my blood type wouldn't allow for it. No matter. I was only doing it because I lived in a vegetarian household for a while and wanted to see what it was like. In the end, I see the life of an animal the same way I see the life of a plant; Alive. Thus "Free Range and Killed with Respect," has been my personal solution. --That in this reality, to live is to enter into a contract whereby life feeds life and everything must die eventually, including us.
-FL
Here's a question. . ,
Why not instead of this Frankenstein Science, just stop feeding garbage to animals, raise them kindly, and kill them with respect? This would solve the prion problem. And the super-bug problem. And the hormone laced milk problem. Among others.
After all, the lives of these animals are being taken so that we can live. Surely they deserve a bit of love. --Also, nobody needs to eat the amount of meat many people do. If our diets were regulated correctly, and if we treated our livestock with affection rather than using them with such coldness, life would be better for a whole lot of creatures as well as humanity. It is true; everything must take life in order to live, and we all must die. Why not try to infuse the process with compassion?
Of course, if you believe in a digital universe where souls do not exist, then what reason does anybody have to respect life and not adopt the behavior patterns of the psychopath?
Welcome to Mordor and the Sith's vision of Empire.
I find it strange that the very subset of the population who love such stories the most are more inclined than anybody to fall into the very paths those stories warn against.
-FL
John Cleese [as the bereaved son]: Um -- er, uh, excuse me but, um, are you suggesting ...*eating my mother*?
...Yeah! Not raw, cooked!
Graham Chapman [the undertaker]:
Cleese: What?!
Chapman: Er, uh, roasted, few french fries, broccoli... Horseradish sauce?
Cleese: Um, uh, well... Well, I do feel a little peckish.
"All hands, BRACE FOR IMPACT!"
Anybody else think Prion is a terrible contraction for "Priory of Scion?" Who names secret societies after cars anyway?
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
>> Those meatarians out there should give life a long good look as decide how do I want to enjoy life: quick and painfull (and ignorant), or slow and healthy.
:-D
>
> Perhaps it is you who are "ignorant" of the fact that the human body is built around an omnivorous diet.
*Sigh* Where to begin?
Humans are omnivorous largely by choice (just because we like the taste of meat) or necessity (because there aren't always enough veggies around to keep us from starving). Nature, however, gives us clues as to what our optimal diet should be.
Go to a mirror and study your teeth. Notice how most of your teeth have flat edges or large crushing surfaces? Those are the teeth of a herbivore: the teeth up front and center are suited for biting off plant matter, while the teeth in back are excellent for grinding the stuff down. The few pointed teeth we have are woefully inadequate for killing and devouring prey -- if you don't believe me, go out into the wilderness and try to take down and eat an animal with nothing but your teeth.
Next, get a reference book on human anatomy and look at the diagrams of the digestive system. Notice the extremely long and twisty intestines? That's the mark of a herbivore -- true meat-eaters have short digestive tracts in order to process food as quickly as possible. They also produce a specific acid to rapidly break down meat once it is ingested, yet humans lack that digestive acid.
Now look up 'dietary fiber' and its value for the digestive system. Nutritionists are in agreement that dietary fiber is not only beneficial, it is essential for good health. That means a diet that is rich in fruits, vegetables, breads and cereals -- all of which contain dietary fiber. By contrast, meat has absolutely *no* fiber.
"But you can't get adequate/complete protein nutrition on a vegetarian diet!" Not so: the average adult human requires only 40 to 50 grams of protein per day, and can get complete protein nutrition by eating certain foods such as
- peanuts and wheat (i.e.: peanut butter sandwich on wheat bread)
- beans and rice (the staple of Mexican food)
- chickpeas and sesame seeds (hummus, anyone?)
- soybeans
Sure, humans can sustain themselves on an omnivorous diet. However, just because we can do something doesn't mean we have to -- or that we ought to. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to finish my bowl of vegetarian chili. Mmmm... meatless chili, mmmm...
"All hands, BRACE FOR IMPACT!"
Further back, "In 1992 ... so called prion knock-out mice [were created]. ...
Strangely enough, mice lacking the prion gene are apparently healthy".
While other studies have found, "abnormalities in circadian rhythms and sleep" and ataxia late in life.
Proportionally, such symptoms may occur in 13 year old cattle (see halfbakery link).
So, to follow the new year's theme of predictions, I fully expect to be able to buy prion free beef by 2025.
Wow. Poor cat, was it like kept indoors all the time? If it wasn't I'd have thought it would go out for a bite or something ;).
;).
Well, the Indian and Chinese vegetarian cuisines are pretty developed (decadent even for the latter[1]), so you can get a variety - still doesn't seem _that_ healthy though. It's still a lot easier to get your amino acids, Omega 3 and B12 from fish and other animals.
[1] Why I say decadent: example Chinese vegetarian dishes available here: mutton curry, sweet and sour pork, fried fish in soy sauce.
All vegetarian. The "fish" even had a fake fish bone made from a piece of sugar cane, presumably so you can choke on it and sue them just like the real thing I guess (doh!). Fish skin is seaweed for the taste and texture. The pork is made from mushroom stalks. Not sure what the mutton is from. I've heard of vegetarian bacon and eggs too not sure how that was done.
That sort of thing doesn't really appeal to me - I'd rather have less "modified" vegetables if I'm having a vegetarian meal, and real meat if I want meat. Given the things they do to make the soy like the "real" thing, it's probably as unhealthy as eating the real thing if not worse
I've had a lasagne that used soft tofu instead of the soft cheese, and it actually tasted pretty good (I think it still had minced meat in it).
Don't know.
. html
:p.
There's this:
http://www.epa.gov/waterscience/fishadvice/advice
Let other people to eat the fishes which tend to accumulate more junk, while you eat the hopefully safer ones. When they start having problems, you stop eating fish
I'm surprised a vegetarian would have a cat anywhere near them... house cats are one of the few species (other than humans) that kill for fun.
There's a restaurant I go to when I have to make my vegetarian friends and meat eating friends happy at the same time, but am tired of Indian... I guess it's more or less Chinese. Same thing as you mentioned though: eel (mushrooms), ginger beef, pork chops, chicken... the ham cubes are just erie. Sometimes the vegetarians are unhappy because the simulation is too good.
"Sometimes the vegetarians are unhappy because the simulation is too good"
Yeah. I won't be surprised if it grossed them out.
Get some visitors from overseas sometimes, and they are't vegetarians but they can't eat the chicken/fish/etc if they see the heads on the same plate as the rest of the animal.
I still think it's a good idea for people who like eating animals to be more aware that they are actually eating some poor animal that was slaughtered. Rather than it "come from the supermarket in nice fillets".
Talking about nice fillets and "meat products"... Y'know the mechanical extraction of flesh from chickens/cows done in the US and some other western countries seems pretty unsanitary.
Over here the intact innards of chickens, cows etc (gizzards, liver etc) can be viably sold at a supermarkets, and chickens are often sold whole, all of which I think isn't such a bad thing. It means they're not just going to rip the carcass apart and spill everything everywhere and then put the pieces back together (with an "approved level" of shit + e.coli in it). I put it that people wouldn't have to cook their chicken/meat so thoroughly if it wasn't contaminated at the slaughterhouse/factory due to bad practices.
That said if almost every part and organ of a cow/chicken has a shelf price, what in the world do they have left to put into burger patties or sausages... Ick.
I grew up in a farming community of 800 people. All my friends raised 4H cattle. Now THAT's an interesting practice. You raise the cow from a calf, brush it, teach it tricks, then sell it to the highest bidder. The pampered ones do taste good though.
We're designed to eat animals, and they don't hesitate to eat their chosen prey. I also don't blame the bear when some twit gets mauled because he thought it was a good idea to tease it. Or hunt it, for that matter.
Teach it tricks? Most people have difficulty eating an animal once they've given it a "proper name".
I told you it was kind of weird. Of course, farmers (and their kids) are a little more practical than most people. Bessy may be cute, but she's still food.