Slashdot Mirror
Mad Cow Disease Confirmed In California
New submitter wave9x writes "The United States Department of Agriculture confirmed today that the nation's fourth case of bovine spongiform encephalopathy, sometimes referred to as 'mad cow disease' was found in a dairy cow in California. The animal has been euthanized and the carcass is being being held under State authority at a rendering facility in California and will be destroyed."
are belong to us!
It is completely telling that news of this appeared in the Business Section (currently the second hit on Google News) before it appeared at all in the Health Section.
FTA: The Centers for Disease Control reports that the chance of contracting mad cow disease, even after consuming contaminated products, is less than one in 10 billion, if at all.
I figure since we won't even have 10 billion people for a while yet, we're safe!
At least we can look forward to cheaper steaks for a while
your thin skin doesn't make me a troll
I'll just leave this here.
As a Wisconsinite who always snickers a little when I see one of those moronic "Happy Cows come from California" commercials on TV, I'll probably tear something from laughter the next time I see one. Cheese is part of our holy trinity: Beer, the Packers, and Cheese. Californian dairies probably aren't aware of the fact that a cow udder with one teat ain't an udder.
So we only have an estimated population of around 7 billion people, yet as of November 2006 there were 200 individuals worldwide diagnosed with mad cow disease, including 164 people in the United Kingdom, 21 in France, 4 in the Republic of Ireland, the 3 in the US, 2 in the Netherlands, and 1 each in Canada, Italy, Japan, Portugal, Saudi Arabia, and Spain, according to the CDC. Of these individuals, most (170) had lived in the UK for over 6 months during the years 1980-1996; 20 others had lived in France during that time. [taken from: http://rarediseases.about.com/od/rarediseases1/a/vcjd.htm ]
So using CDC math we should only have a 0.7 reported cases........
Never happened. True story.
Prions are primarily present in nerve tissue. The major concentration of nerve tissue is in cuts of meat like the T-Bone, which by their nature may still have traces of the spinal cord. Stick with cheaper, lesser cuts of meat (that aren't pink slime...) such as chuck, shank, and brisket, and you'll be fine.
Occasionally living proof of the Ballmer peak.
There was a suggestion to do private testing for BSE by individual ranchers the last time there was an 'outbreak'. The idea was to market their product as having been tested. But that was banned by the USDA.
Have gnu, will travel.
Neither, because they can just switch to using ground moose for a couple months.
But seriously, they probably don't import very much beef from California dairy farms so this is a non-issue.
Try this as a test... a sample mad cow
Ever since we stopped feeding ground up cow parts to other cows, the rate of BSE has dropped to near zero; it's only when cow engage in cannibalism that the disease spreads to enough cattle to produce a measurable risk to any human.
$_ = "wftedskaebjgdpjgidbsmnjgcdwatb"; tr/a-z/oh, turtleneck Phrase Jar!/; print
How long before I go completely vegetarian?
Enjoy dying horribly from contaminated spinach, tomatoes, lettuce, et cetera.
If eating is going to kill me, I choose to die by the steak.
The infection attacks the brain. It's been decades since one of those was anywhere near D.C.
Nope. BSE is caused by mutant (misfolded) _proteins_ (not even viruses!) which can even survive cooking. Ammonia is no danger for them, as it doesn't affect proteins.
I have no mod points but I feel you should be modded insightful and not as funny. It's too sadly, tragically true to be funny.
If that were actually the real policy, then there would never be any outbreaks. The disease only transfers by eating brains and nerves. The cows can only catch it if the farmers are feeding their cows brains and nerves. From sick cows. Which is pretty disgusting considering they are herbivores.
Um, you do realize that this is exactly what they do, right? The remains from slaughtered animals are processed and put back into animal feed.
No, it's definitely prions. They were identified as an infectious agents and were even shown to evolve (!!!) resistance to experimental anti-prion drugs. http://scienceblogs.com/notrocketscience/2009/12/evolution_without_genes_-_prions_can_evolve_and_adapt_too.php
By American beef. If you actually read the report from the CDC the 3 people diagnosed in the US all are believed to have been infected when they were living outside of the US. (If I remember correctly 2 were British and it's expected they were infected when they lived in the UK and the 3rd was a Saudi that got infected in Saudia Arabia.) IE worry more about dying from bad spinach or contaminated tap water.
Did you know 80 to 90% of the moderators on slashdot wouldn't recognize a troll even if one dragged them under a bridge.
If I had points, I would throw an insightful at you.
I had points, but I posted this comment and lost them.
with Rosie O'Donnel's body?
"If eating is going to kill me, I choose to die by the steak."
If eating is going to kill me, I choose to die by the vagina.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
I've given up on commercial beef. I will by free range from someone I know but rarely get the chance these days. How long before I go completely vegetarian?
There's plenty of good reasons to go vegetarian (and plenty of good counterarguments), but fear of BSE-contaminated beef isn't one of them. You're significantly more likely to find contaminated alfalfa than you are beef. We're talking about extremely low chances on either side of the equation, but still...
If you're really looking for an excuse to eat less meat, start with human evolution and its impact on digestion... 20,000 years ago we didn't eat meat every day... many of us didn't eat meat every week. And if you compare obesity rates in countries with high meat consumption against countries where chief staples are grains such as chick peas or rice, there's a very stark difference. there's other factors (sedentary lifestyle, for example), but there's still a strong correlation between eating too much meat and poor health, in part because the meat has significantly higher calorie density than vegetables but takes longer to break down, so you end up consuming more calories before you feel "full".
(and no, I'm not a vegetarian... but I also don't start jonesing if I go for a week without having a steak. I don't really care what you choose to eat, as it's your body. just that if you're really looking for an excuse to go vegetarian, then pick a real reason, not a hysterical reason that's not supported by the science.)
As a Canadian, I've had moose before and it's actually quite good, along the same lines as venison. Moose sausage is absolutely to die for! Personally, I prefer bison to beef anyway, it's much leaner and quite tasty. I tend to stay away from beef as much as possible in favor of fish or poultry.
"I had mod points and all I have to show for it are these lousy comments"