Mad Cow Disease

Alisa Harrison (spokeswoman for the U.S. Agriculture secretary, Veneman) has worked tirelessly the last two weeks to spread the message that bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or mad cow disease, is not a risk to American consumers… For her, it's a familiar message. Before joining the department, Ms. Harrison was director of public relations for the National Cattlemen's Beef Association, the beef industry's largest trade group, where she battled government food safety efforts…and sent out press releases with titles like 'Mad Cow Disease Not a Problem in the U.S.' "…Right now you'd have a hard time finding a federal agency more completely dominated by the industry it was created to regulate. Dale Moore, Ms. Veneman's chief of staff, was previously the chief lobbyist for the cattlemen's association. Other veterans of that group have high-ranking jobs at the department, as do former meat-packing executives and a former president of the National Pork Producers Council." (Eric Schlosser, "The Cow Jumped Over the U.S.D.A.," New York Times, January 2nd, 2004)

Mad Cow Charade It was Agriculture Department opposition and the Republican majority leadership in Congress that defeated a measure proposed just last month to prohibit so-called "downer cattle," too sick to walk into the slaughterhouse, from being added to the nation's meat supply. (Note how quickly things can change in a month...)


Mad Cat Disease "Mad cow has been found in a small number of cats — about 100 — in the United Kingdom, as well as a handful in other European countries. Larger zoo felines that fed directly off infected carcasses also died from the disease, Torres said.Officials in the United Kingdom and elsewhere have said they suspect the cats got the disease by eating cat food tainted with infected meat. That suspicion is bolstered by evidence that British cats contracted the disease at about the same time, and in the same places.“Your gut tells you yes, and the reports tell you yes, because they’re linked temporally and geographically,” said Dr. Niels Pedersen, a specialist in feline infectious diseases at the University of California at Davis."


Swiss cat diagnosed with Mad Cow disease "A Swiss cat has been diagnosed with the feline form of mad cow disease, thought to have been spread through infected pet food ... Britain has reported around 90 cases of the feline disease among the nation's pets, while Norway has also witnessed a case, despite being clear of the bovine brain-wasting disease.The disease also affects the domestic cat's bigger cousins and has been reported in pumas, cheetahs, lions and tigers held in zoos and fed with infected meat."


Zoo cat found to have mad cow-related brain disease " An Asiatic Golden Cat at Melbourne Zoo was found to have a rare brain disease related to mad cow disease...During its captivity the cat was only ever fed chickens, rats, rabbits and kangaroo meat. "


FDA has yet to close loopholes in mad-cow regulation "Since August 1997, FDA has banned the use of cattle remains as an ingredient in feed for other cows, goats and sheep. But there are plenty of loopholes...Poultry can't get mad-cow-like diseases, so feeding them protein meal made from rendered cattle has been considered safe. But poultry litter — food they drop while eating, along with their excrement, feathers and bedding — can legally be fed to cattle.Also, outdated pet food can be used in ruminant (cow, sheep and goat) feed. Retail dry pet food frequently contains ruminant meat and bone meal. Out-of-date dry cat and dog food is sometimes sold as salvage and ends up in cattle feed.Because feeding cattle to cattle is really the only way they get infected, critics of the livestock industry, as well as some within it, have long argued that the best way to deal once and for all with the issue is to totally ban the feeding of all ruminant-derived protein to any living animal, including fish."


Inside the Mad Cow Plant: a Worker Speaks Out

How Now Mad Cow "The discovery of the Washington state cow also triggered long-rehearsed plans at other organizations like the U.S. Department of Agriculture and McDonald's Corp. and the Association which has been working since 1990 to prepare for this day...Meat from a Washington state slaughterhouse that contained cuts from a lone cow that tested positive for mad cow disease was sold in as many as nine California counties, but current rules forbid the state or counties from telling consumers exactly where recalled meat was sold ..."I've just inspected over 80,000 pounds of meat (boxed beef rounds and boxed boneless beef briskets) on two trucks. I wasn't running or hurrying either. One was bound for Sante Fe Springs, California, the other for San Jose, California. I just stamped on their paperwork `USDA Inspected and Passed' in 45 seconds."


From the Tom Tommorrow site..."Fortunately the government is on the case: "downer" cows, too ill to stand upright, will no longer be used to provide meat for humans. And if that doesn't reassure you, there's more:

In addition, brains, skulls, spinal cords, vertebral columns, eyes and certain nerve tissues from cows older than 30 months, as well as the small intestine from all cows, will also be banned from the food supply because they are most likely to harbor the agent that causes mad cow disease. But brains from younger animals will still be considered fit for human consumption.

Boy, that just makes you want to rush out to the nearest fast food joint, doesn't it?"


That tom tommorrow bit mentioning all those brains and spinal columns and eye balls brings to mind those david letterman jokes about hot dogs ... yum ... my brother in law works in a meat packing plant and he says that if you saw what they put in hot dogs you would never eat another dog again (he doesn''t ... i guess he just can't get the image out of his mind when he's about about to bite into that hot dog...of course with this new rules, I guess the hot dog of tommorrow with be sans eye balls and genitals and brains, unless they come from really young cows...


I have been listening to some of the media spin on mad cow today and basically what I have heard boils down to this...'There was only those two mad cows...we don't have mad cows here...' The statement 'only two mad cows in the whole country' is meaningless, since mad cow is not required by law to be reported, and almost no testing is done (thus not finding or reporting any mad cows, and those mad cows that are found need not be reported, and its perfectly legal)

for some reason those media talking heads ignore this salient point...

another salient piont being ignored is the fact that over the last year there have been two reported deaths fin humans from mad cow disease...given how mad cow can only be diagnosed after death, via autopsy, and few of these autopsies are reported (mad cow in humans can mimic 'alzheimers' even what is known as 'early onset alzheirmers) and it would seem to me that with mad cat going around, and the very rare reporting and discovery of humans with mad cow, this salient fact would be worth mentioning when some talking head comes on the tube to talk up the cow, and encourage more cow eating...but for some reason none of these things are mentioned...


Common practice for Ranchers to hide Mad Cow disease ... Alberta's Ralph Klein summarized the official position on Mad Cow Disease as being 'shoot, shovel, and shut up' (in otherwords the saying 'we haven't had any mad cow disease' is meaningless, since the mad cows are shot and then buried secretly on the ranch...the official policy of the American government is that Mad Cow disease is not one of the disease which has mandatory reporting requirements which makes the practice Klein described perfectly legal, and also explains why 'we have no mad cow disease reported here' (which means nothing by the way, given the way things work)...

Mad Cow USA? ... links and commentary on the distortions which actually make up the official 'mad cow policy'...for example it is a distortion to state that 'we don't feed dead cows to other cows' when actually it is legal to feed a dead cow to a deer and then feed the road killed deer to a cow, which is probably how the disease escaped into the wild resutling in a continent wide epidemic of deer, elk, and bison with mad cow disease...as well calves are weaned on cows blood from the slaughter houses and various other practices (treating vegetarian animals as carnivores) continue to be legal)...hats off to the PRWatch site and their excellent work on this issue over many, many years...

First report of a Canadian death of Mad Cow disease...mad cow disease in humans can masquerade as 'Alzheimers' or even 'Early Onset Alzheimers' in the case of young people...since only a brain autopsy after death can really diagnose the difference between the two the new policy of the Alzheimer's association is to encourage families to have autopsies done after death to determine the difference...

Mad Deer Disease - Wisconsin to 'kill every deer' in South Western part of the state ... after years of baiting deer with ground up dead cow waste from slaughter houses, the mad deer now require shooting since the prions persist in the environment...the practice of feeding deer dead cows as well as ground up road killed deer, was started as states battled for the reputation as having deer with the largest antlers, thus winning the hunter's dollar...

First American death of mad cow reported ... posted on the Portland site in September, 2003, not so long ago...


The following are some quotes from an article by Maria Tomchik, which appeared on Z-Net ...

Happy New Years: And Be Careful What You Eat

"The Food and Drug Administration and the U.S. Department of Agriculture -- keep telling us that they're doing a good job of protecting us from the ravages of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) ... it takes about 5-7 years for symptoms of BSE to appear in an infected cow ... dairy farms are sending their abused, used-up, broken-down cows off to the slaughterhouse at younger and younger ages...A ban on butchering downer cows (animals that stagger, can't walk, or exhibit other signs of BSE) will make no difference, either ... unless we want to quarantine and test all young cattle sent to slaughter or ban all animals younger than 7 years old ... "Experts" like to remind us that there have been no confirmed cases of Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (the human form of spongiform encephalopathy) in the United States ... the only way to test for it is by removing brain tissue and examining it under a microscope after the patient has already died. Autopsies are never performed ... the fear of catching the disease from infected brain tissue ... is too great to risk ... we're supposed to rest easy with assurances that the brain and spinal cord of the Mabton cow were "ripped" out of the cow's carcass ... The machine routinely leaves behind spinal cord tissue ... the USDA admits that to be the case. One-third of the hamburger, lunch meat, sausage, and processed ground meat ... contains spinal cord tissue in it ... But "muscle cuts" are supposed to be safe, they tell us. Steaks and roasts are supposedly free of any traces of BSE. Yet a man in Britain recently died from CJD that he contracted from a blood transfusion ... if it's in the British human blood supply, why wouldn't it be in the blood of infected cattle, and in steaks and roasts? ... imple, extremely durable protein that can't be killed by freezing or extreme heat. Researchers have put prions into autoclaves to try and kill them, but they survived. So the slaughterhouse process of rendering ... isn't enough to kill prions. When the USDA tells us that the brain and spinal cord of the Mabton cow were rendered down for use in cosmetics or feed for pigs, chickens, and pets, they're just not telling us that the prions may still enter the human food chain ... organic farms often use fertilizer made with chicken manure, and many organic packaged fertilizers for home gardens have chicken manure in them ... the Mabton cow's carcass passed through the system, was processed for food, sent to distributors and grocery stores, and was almost certainly cooked and eaten before the results of its BSE tests were completed and announced to the public. That's how our mechanized, inhuman, corporate, non-regulated food supply system works."

The full article on the Znet site

Not mentioned in the article but also of interest is the experiments done years ago which demonstrated that the prions that cause mad cow disease persist in the environment. Even years later an animal can become infected just by being placed into a previously infected environment. It was research like this that led to such events as the Yellowstone BSE infected Bison shoot (what happened was that Bison were wandering outside the boundaries of the park and the fear that they would contaminate the environment of cattle ranches with BSE was so great they began gunning down the wandering Bison herds to save the cattle). Where I live the Elk ranching industry has been devastated by rampant BSE infections in the ranched Elk herds. BSE is loose in the wild and last year led Wisconsin to start a program which was supposed to kill every single deer in the entire south western corner of the state (but you know, even those few deer that escaped the dragnet would be enough to perpetuate the spread of BSE throughout the deer, elk an bison herds of North America. What is really remarkable here is that although BSE is a really big problem for deer, elk, and bison, animals which in the wild live long enough to show symptoms, by a great miracle the cow has escaped the ravages of the disease, a truly remarkable feat, well, except for those couple of cows that slipped through the cracks, but no doubt that was either just a Canadian problem, and not an American problem, or it was just a really unlikely event that took place those two times and will never happen again, given how safe all our cows are (mosts cows dying by the age of three, and thus, thankfully, we 'have no mad cows here' because they get eaten before they can display symptoms...the Madson cow was seven years old, which explains how it came to be staggering around, and discovered to have mad cow disease, but that doesn't explain how it got ground into hamburger and various other products...

One thing to keep in mind here is that the North American cow is, over time, the TRILLION dollar cow. That would be Trillion with a 'T' and not Billion with a 'b'. Cattle are the prop that keeps modern agriculture from collapsing under the weight of its own enormous production. Cattle return about one gram of protein for every 50 to 100 grams they consume, so sending most of the worlds grain products through a cow, while it makes good economic sense, from the marketing point of view, by making a market for all those grain and corn and soy bean products that flood world markets every year, it does not make good nutritional sense to first send a hundred grams of protein through the belly of a cow so that cow can give back one gram of protein, not to mention that hardening of the arteries and other disabilities found in people that live in high cow consumption countries, while being almost unheard of in countries where people can't afford the cow consumption life style like they do here. Meanwhile even the cow can't keep up with the enormous productive capacity of modern agriculture, and thus we find prices falling, and subsidies kicking in to keep every thing afloat, and governments wrangling at such conferences as that of the WTO (where the Americans hypocritically wanted to open up dumping ground markets for all the big piles of agriculture production they can't sell on the glutted world markets, since all the people who can afford the expense of sending all the world's food through a cow before eating it, are already doing so, and those who aren't can't afford it, so what this means is that we can get rid of the growing crisis of surplus commodities and over production of food by birthing and fattening more cows, because the world is all cowed up already. The cow is already worth many tens of billions of dollars a year, being the fast food of choice, along with the chicken, which as the years go by and the decades go by make that cow worth trillions, which explains why even though a horrible threat like BSE exists the official policy remains, in the words of Alberta's premier, Ralph Klein, that one should deal with mad cows by employing the 'shoot, shovel, and shut up' practice (or risk bringing down the whole modern agricultural system, which depends on that cow eating heavily, otherwise, bad as things are now, with that cow sticking the world with fifty to one hundred times as much uneaten grain products as is currently the case, well I don't need to tell you what a disaster that could be (in economic terms). So when you think about the trillions tied up in that cow, you can understand how a 'reasonable' person might conclude that, really, so some people are going to eat a mad cow burger and drop dead, but that's a risk we just have to take...Now personally, I feel that if people are very informed about all the mad deer, for example, and they decide well they will hunt and eat a deer and just take their chances, well that's their risk they took. It is typical when human mad cow cases are reported to blame them on venison, or up here there is this suggestion that it came from those Bison burgers that became all the rage at the EX. You take your chances, and I suppose there are still people willing to hunt deer in South West Wisconsin, in fact I read an interview with those deer hunters and they had decided to go for it, which I found unbelievable, but like I said, it was an informed choice. Unfortunately, because of the trillions of dollars all tied up in that cow, the consumer cannot make an informed choice about that cow, being disinformed after all, thus when a consumer eats a mad burger or picks up a mad dog with mustard, someone else made the choice that they would take that risk for them, which of course they would then not perceive as being a risk at all, since we don't have mad cows here, well except for those two elderly cows that showed symptoms. All our young cows that everyone is eating, well no one has ever seen a mad cow around here, right, which isn't surprising by the way, and as long as no cow is allowed to live longer than four years, maybe no one will ever see a mad cow around here again. Mad deer, elk and bison, are everywhere, but fortunately for us, there are no mad cows here...

And if you believe that one, perhaps I can interest you in buying on of local bridges...I also have a few interesting emails from Nigeria you might be interested in reading (Nigeria now leading the world not only in the billion dollar email scam racket (believe it or not) but according to the 700 hundred club television show, they are now raising the dead in Nigeria using Bible powers, something that could come in handy around here, you know, given the ways things are....)

What we have here is the most short sighted so called 'mad cow policy' in the world...the way it works is like this...we eat all our mad cows while they are to young for anyone to know they have mad cow, and the old ones get secretly shot on buried on the ranch

remarkably short sighted and potentially costly mistake in policy, you know save a dime to lose a dollar sort of deal...kind of like that 'no climate change policy' climate change policy we have, you know, the one where we'll just deal with that lost beach front property, or that desert or swamp, depending on how things turn out, well we'll deal with that when it becomes an emergency problem...we'll also deal with our disappearing glaciers in about ten or twenty years, which is real soon in the great scheme of things by the way, when our lakes and rivers dry up on us....as for those mad cows well we will just keep eating the young ones and hiding the old ones... think of the trillions that will be saved...unless people find out , of course, but they'll never find out...what me worry

Are vegetarians safe?

Time to explode another myth

according to an interview with John Stauber (Mad Cow USA author) you would be surprised where the rendered cow parts wind up...

for example if you take a headache caplet or any other pill in caplet form...rendered cow product...as Stauber points out just avoiding the cow is not a solution due to the long listing of products that rendered cow waste actually winds up being included in as an ingredient...its to wide spread to be avoided even by vegetarians...

The interview is here ... Stauber interview

Mad Cow USA: The Nightmare Begins By John Stauber ... Those who did read "Mad Cow USA" when it was published in November, 1997, however, realized that the United States assurances of safety were based on public relations and public deception, not science or adequate regulatory safeguards.

have a nice day...

Peak Oil, Mad Cow Disease, and September 11th...connecting the dots

INDEX

A Unified Field Theory

The Unified Field Theory
is also available as a zip file -> unified.zip

Introduction :The Pioneer Effect and the New Physics. A brief description of the new physics required to explain the 'Pioneer Effect', which is the constant deceleration of space craft as they fly through space.

Principles of Evolution: A Study in the Evolution of Bedbugs


A couple of years ago my bedroom was invaded by bedbugs. There were two variant genetic lines. One type of bedbug was an enlongated, thin, tubular insect, and the second genetic line was a flat, perfectly circular insect. The result of the cross breeding of these two genetically distinct variants was the production of a bedbug with charcteristics of both, an enlongated, flat bedbug with a central bulge (such that the shape of the bedbug was somewhere between 'long' and 'circular'). The long skinny bedbugs were such strange and unfamiliar looking insects that at first I did not recognize them as being bedbugs, and considered them to be a seperate species of insect. However, as the photographs of bedbugs above indicate, enlongated and skinny bedbugs are not uncommon, and the photographs also show the variants that are produced by genetic combinations that result in an insect somewhere in between 'circular' and 'enlongated'.

Therefore it is my hypothesis that evolution occurs by means of the transfer of dominate genes, with the production of such dominant genes being the product of 'biological algorithms', a genetic software program that brings physical characteristics into harmony with behavior, such that when behavior changes, and a conflict then exists, this acts as a trigger and causes the release of dominant genes. The result is rapid evolution of species. The bedbug is a relatively new insect, not the product of millions of years of evolution but rather an insect that is evolving in real time. The newly emerging dominant form of the insect is the flat, round ciruclar insect, well adapted to living in human bedrooms (it is flat, rather than tubular, thus allowing it to hide in the smallest cracks, living a stealthy lifestyle, and it is round, which gives the insect a maximum storage capacity such that it must endanger itself only a few times a month by emerging to feed.

Other examples of rapid evolution include the development of long legs in an invasive species of toad in Australia. As the toads move into the mountainous regions of Australia, and their behvaior changes, making them 'climbing toads', over the course of just a couple of decades the toads in the highlands have grown long legs specially adapted to climbing. It is worth noting here that the toads are poisonous, and are a successful invasive species because they have no natural predators in Australia, and so it would not be the case that the toads with long legs were 'the fittest survivors', because all the toads are survivors, and therefore predation does not explain the rapid emergence and spread of such well adapted, long legged toads. Once again we see evidence for the existence of biological algorithms and the rapid spread of dominant genes through a population, which once introduced proceed to overwhelm the older genes which are being replaced (making toad long legged and a bed bug round and flat).

A Theological Experiment

My interest in pursuing the Unified Field Theory is spurred on by my need to discover the theoretical explanation of a new form of propulsion (as explained on this page: Why the Unified Field Theory?). The experiment involving the bedbugs came out of nowhere.

I also believe that it is possible to justify theological propositions using experimental methods. If a thing is an objective truth then it can be verified and proven true by means of experimentation. Such a theological proposition is of more value than a ‘divine revelation’, since such revelations depend upon nothing more than establishing authority figures which requires the creation of artificial hierarchies, for the only reason why I might be encouraged to believe an authority figure who orders me to believe unsubstantiated opinions is if I could somehow be convinced that this authority possessed a mind that was somehow superior to mine, and thus was fit to express opinions as though opinions were unquestionable facts and thus worthy of being elevated to the status of absolute dogma.

There is a self evident human inequality which is visibly apparent. Some people are ‘beautiful’ and thus are the true elite on this planet, and some people are not. It is this sexual inequality and the degeneration that follows upon beauty that is the true driving force behind all the evil that happens on earth. The need for ruthless oppression and the pursuit of wealth and the consequent creation of suffering and poverty which must follow upon this practice is for the purpose of creating an artificial alpha elite.

The true elites are the young and the beautiful. The artificial elite are the rich and the wealthy. The elite aging rich artificial alpha male has no good looks, for he is physically degenerate, but he will be found escorting beauty because he has a beautiful wallet. If he loses his wallet he will be found at home with all the other unattractive aged beta males sitting in a rocking chair watching reruns of Bonanza. No money, no sex. It is for this reason that the alpha males are found to be so ruthless and so violent in pursuit of their goal. The alpha male has fallen. The beta male has arisen and now the whole planet is full of ruinous destruction for it.

We see in religion a confused and contradictory reaction to this reality. On the one hand religion preaches a sexless heaven where castration and the clitorectomy create ‘pure spirits’. Muslims throw women under sacks. On the other hand religion supports hierarchy and is the prop of the elite alpha male. It is for this reason that religion is incoherent when it comes to speaking about sex.

Now we see this same principle at work in all of nature. Guppies dance and show off their colorful tails and the guppy who dances with the most colorful tail is the sexually successful guppy. Therefore it is the doctrine of the ruthless oppressor which teaches that the solution to human sexual violence is to be found in castration and the creation of pure ghosts. This would be equivalent to damning an aardvark for having the ‘sinful aardvark nature’ or prosecuting an anteater for the high crime of ‘ant genocide’.

Therefore it was my theological hypothesis that the correct solution to this problem is to give every guppy a beautiful colorful tail. I compare this solution to the classic religious solution which is to cut off every tail since having a tail is ‘sinful’. If having a tail is sinful then God must be sinful for no human being has any choice in deciding whether or not they would be born with a colorful tail, or whether they would not.

When I was young I was a beautiful guppy with a lovely tail. So everyone seemed to think. I am older now. My nose became very badly sunburned and destroyed. It seemed good to me to test my hypothesis by using these ‘biological algorithms’ to correct this problem. I healed half my nose as you can see by the line separating the still very dark patch on the side in the photograph below.





I documented my experiment on these pages. one two t hree four fi ve six


I have confirmed to my own satisfaction that my theological proposition is correct and that religious dogma is erroneous, being based as it was upon nothing more than ‘divine revelation’ which is just a form of opinionated speculation. For the time being I am not continuing this experiment, for I must wait until the weather on this planet improves, and the dark clouds of ruthless oppression break letting a little sun shine come through so that I can show the world the truth about God, by showing people how God goes about giving an old guppy back his beautiful colorful tail.


Until then I will have to sit on the sidelines, while all my scientific breakthroughs are deliberately ignored, while I wonder to myself what ever in the world could be wrong with the human race, because what this all will prove at the end of it all is that there definitely was something wrong with the people on this planet.