the truth about mad cow disease

“that is funny, I sent the link to some friends (with laq's warning)”

“LMFAO at that! When he said he p*ssed in your milk, I almost choked on the milk I happened to be drinking.”

“They Are Lying About Your Food

My name is Dave and I work at Vern's Moses Lake Meats.

I did until the day the mad cow test results on the Sunny Dene cow came back positive for BSE. That was Wednesday, December 24. On Friday, December 26, the KXLY news crew was at the end of Vern's driveway, locked out by a cable gate.

The USDA had told the world that the mad cow had been slaughtered here, but it was not in the food chain. A blatant lie.

It was one of many. I walked out with the news crew at lunch time because I can't stand a government cover-up. They asked me "was the cow in the food chain?" I told them of course it was, it's meat. Where else would it be? They asked me if the cow was a downer. I told them no, it was just an old cow.

The USDA had us taking brain stem samples from downers and back door cripples only. Since we only had a few walkers on this trailer full of downers, we just killed her along with them. We took a brain sample from her head because the USDA gives up $10 per sample.

If we would have unloaded her in the pens, we would have never caught the BSE. How many other walkers have BSE? We will never know. The USDA only tested the downers and cripples and only at our plant. We had only been taking brain samples for about a month when we found this one.

When the USDA said no more downers would be slaughtered, they essentially said no more BSE testing would be done. Vern's and every other slaughterhouse kept right on killing and selling Holstein meat from the same area as the mad cow with no BSE testing whatsoever. This is true and easily verifiable.

And just so the folks in Moses Lake don't feel left out, the beef head, tongue, liver, kidneys and tail were sold right here in the Columbia Basin. It's way past time for everybody to stop thinking with their bank accounts and start trying to find a way to stop the spread of BSE.

The minute the USDA found the contaminated cow, they stopped the brain stem collection and testing. Why? Ka-ching! It's the money. Billions.

If you want to be sure you and your family are eating safe meat, demand testing on every beef slaughter. It's quick and easy. Don't eat another piece of meat until you see a sticker that says tested and cleared for BSE on the package. BSE is 100% fatal --- if you or your kids get it, you die a very painful death. It's a slow, wasting disease. It's terrible.

Right now, a lot of people are telling you how safe their beef is, but they don't know if it is or is not without testing. That's their checkbook talking. That rendering plant in Canada wasn't feeding 81 cows, it was feeding thousands of cows. Every second that goes by, more untested beef goes on the dinner plate. If you eat mad cow, you are going to get sick and you are going to die.

Stand up and demand safe meat.




See also: Man Who Killed the Mad Cow Has Questions of His Own”

“is this even remotely for real?”

“Do a google search for "Dave Louthan" yourself.”

“Up here SOME scientists are saying there are a lot more carrying cows in the system than we (mis-informed by the authorities) think.”

“Great. Prions R Us.”

“"Do a google search for "Dave Louthan" yourself."
Violin
03:28:42 PM
02/05/04

ok, so are you saying that if I read it on the internet I should accept it as fact?”

“Of course not. Go have a hamburger.”

“People close to mad cow question USDA's downer position
Slaughterhouse, butcher say cow could walk


By Matthew Weaver
Herald staff writer

Ed. note: Two weeks ago, we received and subsequently printed, a letter from Dave Louthan, an employee of Vern's Moses Lake Meats, a Moses Lake slaughterhouse that killed the Holstein which tested positive for mad cow disease. Mr. Louthan's letter caused quite a stir, resulting in dozens of letters and e-mails to the newspaper from throughout the country and Canada. Some questioned the integrity of the Herald, asking if Mr. Louthan was a "real" person, others condemning us for the eventual destruction of the beef industry.
We interviewed Mr. Louthan late last week, as well as Tom Ellestad, co-owner of Vern's Meats. Following is Dave Louthan's story.
There's blood on Dave Louthan's hands. Mad cow blood.
Louthan said that he is the person who killed the cow discovered to be infected with the first case of mad cow disease in the United States, although there would be people who argued that.
"... But no one was doing my job that day," he said.
Louthan said he worked at Vern's Moses Lake Meats for four years, until a few days after the mad cow news broke.
"That news (of the mad cow find) came out on Christmas Eve; Christmas came, day after Christmas came, (the U.S. Department of Agriculture) said we're not going to kill any more downers and that'll cure the mad cow problem, which is just ridiculous," Louthan said. Louthan wrote a letter, published in the Columbia Basin Herald under the headline "Is the beef safe? Who knows?" stating that the cow in question could walk before it was slaughtered and that its meat had entered the food chain, and he criticized the management of Vern's Moses Lake Meats for the way it handled the situation.
Louthan said he suggested to his bosses that it would be a better idea to invite reporters in and show them that they didn't have anything to hide and had followed the law and regulations.
"I would have brought them in, handed them a knife and said, 'You can help me and I'll show you how it works,'" he said. "That would have been the way to go."
Louthan said he walked out to the reporters at lunchtime and asked what they wanted to know. The reporters asked him if the cow was in the food chain, and if it had been a downer cow.
"I said, 'It is in the food chain,'" Louthan said. "It's a cow, it's meat. Where else would it be? You can't paint a house with it. It's meat. Kill it, it goes and we eat it."
Louthan said in his letter to the editor that the beef head, tongue, liver and kidneys have been sold in the Columbia Basin.
Nolan Lemon, a spokesman for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, said a recall put in place from beef sold at Vern's Moses Lake Meats netted all the beef from the infected cow.
Louthan said the cow was not a downer, contrary to the position that the U.S. Department of Agriculture has taken since Secretary Ann Veneman made the announcement on Dec. 27.
"It was an up cow, it was not a bad walker at all," Louthan said. "It was a good cow."
Vern's Moses Lake Meat manager Tom Ellestad also told the Columbia Basin Herald on Dec. 24 that the cow had not been a downer.
The downer status, which means a cow cannot walk, of an animal is significant because the USDA focuses its testing for bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) --the formal name for mad-cow disease -- on those animals. But Lemon said this case proved the system does work. The cow in question was flagged because of its odd behavior, such as running around in its pen, he said.
"At the end of the day, the surveillance system worked. We did find that one-in-a-million case," he said.
Lemon added that the cow was probably marked as a downer by a veterinarian so as to alert authorities that it needed to be tested.
Downer cows are not able to walk because of a variety of reasons beyond BSE, including injuries from birthing, leg injuries or other sicknesses.
Ellestad declined to comment on Louthan's letter, limiting himself to saying that his business' main interests were the consumer and the product, as opposed to starting a public debate.
USDA inspectors were at Vern's Friday afternoon, inspecting the premises. Ellestad said they were there in order to "come up with a more improved program" of product safety. He added that commenting on the controversy would jeopardize the government agency's efforts.
Leon Thacker, Purdue University veterinary pathologist and director of the Indiana Animal Disease Laboratory, addressed a concern about slaughterhouse employees handling BSE-infected parts.
When asked if humans could contract mad cow disease by handling or touching the brain, spinal cord or other infected parts of the animal, Thacker had this to say during a phone interview Friday.
"It's not likely. Our skin is the most efficient protector we've got," Thacker said. "If there's no break in the skin, [there is] no danger of it being picked up. As far as I know, [there is] no danger to inhale it either."
Thacker dispelled any cause for concern when it comes to eating muscle cuts from a BSE-positive cow.
"What we normally eat when we're eating beef is muscle," Thacker said. "That muscle meat doesn't contain prion (the causative agents of the disease)."
The Associated Press recently reported that the Japanese government blocked the sale of American T-bone steaks. According to the AP article, T-bone steaks are cut from the area where a cow's vertebrae meets its ribs, which is an area that can contain spinal tissue.
According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Web site, transmissible spongiform encephalopathies are "rare forms of progressive neurodegenerative disorders that affect both humans and animals."
A human TSE is called Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease.
CJD occurs at a rate of one cases per million people, states the CDC's Web site.
However, a variant form of Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease, which is also known as vCJD, is believed by scientists to be caused by eating the brain or spinal cord tissue of bovine spongiform encephalopathy-infected cattle.
On Dec. 1, 2003, there were 153 vCJD cases reported worldwide, states the CDC's Web site (143 cases were from the United Kingdom and one case each from Canada, Ireland, Italy and the United States).
According to the CDC's Web site however, the Canadian, Irish and U.S. cases were reported by individuals who had stayed in the United Kingdom "during a key exposure period of the U.K. population to the BSE agent."
USDA spokesman Lemon said that a relatively small number of BSE cases correlates to a small risk for people to be infected to vCJD from eating beef.
Patty Lovera, who works on the food program at Public Citizens, a non-profit consumer group, said that the current U.S. situation brought several issues to mind.
Lovera said that the group had participated in a presentation that touched on the idea the previous week.
"One of the ideas that we were trying to present is that downers are a risk population, but that's not it," she said. "Keeping downers out of the meat supply is fine and good, but if this cow was a walker, it kind of backs up our case that we need to be doing a more extensive testing program that goes past the downers."
Lovera said another issue was the amount of training given to USDA inspectors who look over the animals. Several inspectors came forward at the presentation and said they needed more training, Lovera said.
"Inspectors, when they're looking at animals, they're saying 'That animal is normal,' and it goes straight through," Lovera said. "If they say it is suspect, then it goes to a different pool and the veterinarian comes and looks at it. We're saying that there needs to be more training, and they're saying that as well." Lovera said that her group has been asking that all cattle that reach a single age be tested, and said that the tests seem to work when a cow is 20 months old.
"I'm feeling better about our position now, hearing this news," she said.
Felicia Nestor, food safety project director for the Government Accountability Project, also said that the discrepancies between the USDA and the people closest to the cow raises questions about the testing.
"USDA is claiming that everything is fine, that everything is under control, but to me it seems premature," Nestor said. "We don't have the proper basis to make those reassurances at this point, especially if the facts are still in question. What we have is that plants are determining which animals have been tested, so there is an opportunity for bias there."
Nestor said that the next step should be an immediate ramping up of the testing, increasing the quantity and quality of the surveillance.
"We need to know how extensive this problem is," she said.
Nestor praised Ellestad for volunteering to do the sampling for mad cow disease.
"The American public owes that plant owner a debt of gratitude," she said. "If he had not been willing to volunteer and perform that civic duty, we wouldn't see the USDA's more protective regulations that have been implemented since the finding. That's going to protect the public and that's going to protect the industry more."
Nestor said that while the future of the testing is uncertain at the moment, but any workers involved in places where the testing will be undertaken need whistle blower protection.
"They need to know that they and their families are protected if they feel that they need to reveal that someone is interfering with programs to protect the public," Nestor said.”

“The other links are to the New York Times which is at least respectable.”

“Let's not all jump on the bandwagon here. Even if we had mass amounts of infected cows in the food chain, I'd have a much better chance of winning the lottery than getting vCJD. As for a cover up I didn't read anything here that I didn't get in the mainstream news.”

“The USDA seems to have a little egg mess to deal with.”

“does anyone know how fully cooking the meat affects this problem? I know very few steakes eaten in the US are well done, but I'm curious?”

“Roam Around, from what I have heard, cooking doesnt kill the protein/prion that is dangerous.”

“Cooking does not prevent the disease which is caused by Mad Cow.”

“well that's one tough little prion!

just saw the "Beef; it's whats for dinner" ad.

hmmmm, maybe not.......”

“I think a new slogan could be " Beef, its what infects your brain and makes you drool then die"”

“Where's my ribeye?!?!?”

“Some opinions on the topic....

The solution to this is not to stop eating beef all together. Small farmers such as myself have been raising quality and nutritious animals for as far back as I can remember. Father, grandfather...etc. and that goes for most small farms in the U.S.

The problem arises when large factory farms began to look at the quick dollar and eyes got big where they want the largest animal possible in the shortest amount of time. These cattle in the finshing stage are fed chicken manure, ground up paper, stale candy as well as cattle and numerous other materials, basically treating them as a garbage disposal before they leave the large scale, government regulated facilities to end up on your table. The best thing is not more regulation of this process. More government involvement is never the solution (for those who think lobbyists are out for your best interest, think again). What America needs to do is to get back to direct purchase from local farms.

Cattle raised on local, small scale farms spend the majority of their life eating grass, getting good exercise and the grain they eat is not contaminated with yesterdays garbage. While some processing of other livestock is allowed on the farm,that of cattle is not and must be done at an inspected facility. There are plenty small scale facilities where most farmers take their livestock to be slaughtered and get there meat back to sell to consumers from the farm. And guess what, no need to be concerned with mad cow, BGH or many of the other side affects.

In other words, spend a little time, and instead of going to the grocery store because of the ease and convenience, entertain a local farmer. Even offer to volunteer some time if you really want to know where your meat comes from.

Many small farmers will appreciate the genuine interest in their product and be glad to educate and answer any questions you might have.

Several consumers come out from the city and make a day out of it while picking up there beef and poultry, but if you do that, plan on lending a hand!

Well this is just a topic that gets me fired up and that I feel strongly about and I apologize for the long post. These are just my thoughts and glad I could share them with you.”

“No need to apologize for the long post.

For many people like myself, going to a farm for our meat is just not practical. Heck, life is busy enough its hard enough to find the time to dash to the supermarket sometimes. I don't really mind spending a little more for my beef, especially if it is safer, nicer looking or better tasting. The trouble is, we as consumers really have no way of knowing how that package in the grocery store was produced. The folks at the meat counter don't know much more. If we had decent labeling or identifiable brands with high standards, I think it would entice many people to spend a little more on a quality product.”

“do you have Whole Foods supermarkets, Violin? if i ate red meat, i'd buy it from there...all their food, including their meat, is labelled.

whole foods ”

“Thanks lyra. None are exactly convenient to me, but maybe there is something similar.

Did you hear about the threat to the tofu supply?”

“Veddy interestink.

There is one near me. Might have to check them out this weekend.”

“I love whole foods - try to get my seafood from there too.”

“It's just a protein, cooking must to kill it. The question is: what temp is required and what is the infectious dose?”

“When I first heard about mad cow disease, I thought the Center for Disease Control caught up with my ex.”

“cooking will not kill the prion, but your meat is very unlikely to be contaminated even if it comes from a cow with the disease. The prion is only found in the brain and spinal tissue, so for it to end up in your meat there must be some cross contamination.”

“My data is out of date!? Why wont heat kill 'em? Maybe I need to get caught up on prions. I gave up red meat when I first read about a potential causal relation. Almost a decade ago? Can't go back to it now.”

“Heat simply doesn't affect prions, they are a type of protein.

This if from webmd's page on mad cow.

Does cooking food kill the prion that causes mad cow disease?

Common methods to eliminate disease-causing organisms in food, like heat, do not affect prions. Also, prions only seem to live in nervous system tissue.

”

“Violin,

Good post as it offers more room for open debate on the subject. I agree that if you live in the City that driving to the country for products isn't always practicle, but once per year to fill a floor model freezer is all it would take, maybe on the way back from a backpacking trip!

I also agree with you that as consumers there is no way to tell what you are getting in a supermarket. If higher standards of labeling were introduced that would clerify further what you are buying at the grocery store. Additionally however, whose to say thats what is in the package? It sounds cynical but money goes a long way in determining what gets by and what doesn't. I will always be set in the belief that hands on is the only way to ensure what you are getting, or atleast having a personal relationship with who is in charge of your food. But again I understand that this is not always possible or practical.

I agree that everyone cannot put the time in as I talked about earlier and was using that as an ideal situation, so what can be done? That's tough because of our areas of concentrated populations. It takes these large processing and finishing facilities to accomodate areas such as NYC (as an example) because small farms can't complete at that scale, thus quality decreases with quantity.

I understand your comment about life being to busy and hard to find time but would you agree with me that this lifestyle (not you personally but society as a whole) in part has led to the current situation the large scale beef industry faces? We want food, we want it fast and ready to prepare with little input because many don't have the time. While I don't condone 90 percent of what the large scale industry does (see above posts), the fact that much of America has turned the production of their food over to large scale mass production operations has in part led to the decline in quality on the shelves. And its a byproduct of hectic lives and a fast pace.

Many places now offer "natural" (which we do) or "organic" food options which is a good viable alternative to current large scale productions and trickles down to the little guys as these type of production models in themselves do not lend to large scale production. They cost a bit more to cover management costs but the finished product is much better.
We do get a bit more for our products but thats because there is a lot more management and labor involved in a better product and I think people understand that as you stated.

Again..long post, I need to get away from this computer!!”

“"...your meat is very unlikely to be contaminated even if it comes from a cow with the disease. The prion is only found in the brain and spinal tissue, so for it to end up in your meat there must be some cross contamination."
-- bison
01:35:11 PM


I wouldn't be too sure...


Don’t read if you’re eating lunch!




From the NY Times story I linked to above:

With a 400-pound band saw, he said, splitters cleave the spinal column from neck to tail as hot-water jets blast fat and bone dust off the saw. The slurry, with spinal cord in it, "runs all over the beef," he said. The carcasses are then hosed with hot water and sprayed with vinegar.

Bucky Gwartney, director of research for the National Cattlemen's Beef Association, confirmed that most American slaughterhouses do the same.”

“Violin,
my impression was that the spine and brain were usually processed apart from the rest, but I'll have to take a more in depth look. Regardless, that is the method used for the majority of british before they changed to regulations and the infection rate was extremely low to the point that it wouldn't even be a second thought for me.”

“Anyone ever seen some one with CJD? There are a 1000 more pleasant ways to go.”

“I wonder how long before Dave Louthan commits "suicide" ?”

“Yeah... I think there were something like 100 human cases out of something like 60 million UK citizens so the chances are slim. I'd still feel pretty rotten if I fed my kids poison. I haven't bought any hamburger since the end of December. This isn't the only concern with our beef so I'm looking more carefully.”

“There’s a lot to what you say Sheldon. In this country we’ve made a choice in favor of large-scale efficiencies in our food production over the “quaint” defense of small farms in much of Europe. Perhaps things like mad cow, antibiotic resistant diseases and possible human health effects of hormone use in our food will show us that small scale farms have public benefits.”

“U.S. Ends Investigation of Mad Cow Case

Federal officials ended their investigation into the country's first case of mad cow disease yesterday after failing to locate almost two-thirds of the 80 cattle that had entered the United States from Canada with an infected Holstein.

The 52 missing animals include 11 cows believed to be at higher risk because they were born about the same time as the Holstein and may have eaten the same contaminated feed. "The paper trail has gotten cold; we have not been able to trace those animals," said W. Ron DeHaven, chief veterinary officer at the Department of Agriculture. "Some of them very likely have gone to slaughter," he said.

<snip>
"It's time to move on," he said.”

“I have given up ground beef. My professor raises beef as a sideline, and he keeps talking about the butchering process and what stuff goes into ground beef. Not something I want to eat anymore. Maybe safe to eat steak and roasts since they can't hide spinal tissue in it.”

“You should check out Howard Lyman. The stuff he could tell you about the beef industry would scare you away from steak and roasts as well. It's not only the spinal tissue you need to worry about. He says the stuff that is put into cattle feed would curl your toes.”

“Oh man, is there no depths that humans can leach into? Why can't the cows just eat grass?”

“How about avian influenza turning up in the States? That means it's in Canada too. I never thought I'd be a food freak, but organic keeps looking better. The only red meat I've eaten for over a year now is caribou and locally raised (people I know) lamb.

I now use olive oil imported from Europe where they don't allow GMO's - corn and rape (Canola) oils are all GMO'ed in North America.”

“Yeah, I was pretty naive and just assumed they munch on grass till doomsday, then I listened to this guy for a couple of hours while at work. He may be a quack, but he was the one on Oprah that caused the cattle industry to sue her. I still eat meat though, so I guess I'm a sicko, lol.”

“There has been a bit of press about olive oils from Europe not being what they were claimed to be. Like some of it was blended with other oils, etc. There is supposed to be a new labeling system that helps prevent deceptive practices.”

“I don't know much about the food industry, but I bet it's not as closely regulated as we're led to believe. I think Phaedrus knows quite a bit about this kind of stuff.”

“It was strange coming here and the amount of trust people in the U.S. have in food regulations. In Europe Salmonella in eggs was the first food scare, then mad cow. Then the trust was gone and more and more people wanted to go to organic - for me, much of it tastes better to. Organic egges amazed me, much less yellow yolks. Organic chickens where the skin is yellow rather than white, and the flavor is amazing. And carrots, it amazed me how strong the carrot taste was in an organic carrot.
It's organic for me where possible now. I just don't trust the biotech companies.
The hormones in beef here are particularly scary.”

“I heard the cows are mad because no one tips them.”