End of Factory Farming?

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Dec 4 2000 LONDON (Reuters) - UK scientists urged Europe on Monday to help farmers move away from intensive agriculture, saying the end of factory farming was the only way to kill off mad cow disease. The scientists, who advised and criticized the UK government at the height of Britain's mad cow crisis, told EU farm ministers that tests for bovine spongiform encephalopathy were not sensitive enough to guarantee BSE-free beef. "Action needs to be taken now to initiate plans for the genuine long-term eradication of BSE," the three scientists said in a letter to European Union food safety Commissioner David Byrne.

"We would urge that the EU should both promote, and provide substantial funding for an expansion of extensive and organic systems of beef production...and a scaling down of industrially farmed beef throughout Europe."

EU farm ministers were meeting in Brussels to decide how to curb the spread of the brain-wasting disease, considering a ban on all meat-based livestock feed and measures to keep older cattle out of the food chain unless tested for BSE.

But Iain McGill, who worked for the Agriculture Ministry at the height of Britain's crisis, Stephen Dealler, who has worked on BSE since 1988, and Adrian Holmes, a lobbyist on the matter, warned the EU that a wide cattle cull and increased testing may not halt the disease's spread.

"The current tests for BSE would not appear to be sufficiently sensitive to guarantee that beef is BSE-free," they said, adding that false negative results could allow high-risk cattle tissues back into the food chain.

"Regarding the culling of cattle it must be worth flagging up the enormous problems with the disposal of cattle carcasses in the UK."

They said a widespread cattle cull could also expose people to BSE from the carcasses -- whether eaten or not -- through environmental contamination.

"There is currently no safe and satisfactory route for disposal of carcasses which is also logistically feasible on such a large scale," they said.

Europe should also adopt France's ban on the tissues most susceptible to the disease, including the ileum and thymus.

Moreover, Europe should fund research for a cure to BSE and its human equivalent, new variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease.

But to end the spread and kill off the disease, Europe has to start farming in a different way, they said.

"The German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder is calling for the end of factory farming," they said.

"The UK BSE inquiry also came to the conclusion that BSE was a product of intensive agriculture -- a 'recipe for disaster'."

-- JLS in NW AZ (stalkingbull007@AOL.com), December 06, 2000

Answers

Yet many more reasons for not eating any red meat, might be enough to push me into total vegetarianism !!! Annie in SE OH.

-- Annie Miller (annie@1st.net), December 07, 2000.

Earth to UK scientists, Earth to UK scientists. Get real - it ain't a-gonna happen.

Among other things, extensive, organic beef production would like raise the price of beef and then consumers would howl.

As far as I know BSE has only been found in dairy herds, which receive a sizeable amount of supplemental feed. When these go to slaughter they largely become hamburger or low-grade and priced cuts.

While you may not like some of the diet of cattle in feedlots, such as processed poultry litter, so far I have not heard of a single case of BSE in them. These normally end up as better cuts.

Old beef animals off of farms usually meet the same fate as dairy cows. I say usually since occasional a prime cow is culled for some reason other than age or poor body condition.

Cull bulls generally go to work for someone like Oscar Myers. It's not called bull-lonne for no reason.

Thus, stick with t-bones at $6.59 per pound or at least cuts with no bones in them.

Even if BSE-tainted meat does hit the market place it appears only people with a particular susceptibility to it have been affected. In England, likely millions ate BSE-tained meat and there have only been 70 confirmed human cases as a result from the last figures I have. I believe the rest of Europe has had only one confirmed case.

Scientists simply don't know for sure what causes BSE transmittal. There is an extremely strong link from the use of feeds which contained the carcasses of sheep infected with scrappies. However, cases in the rest of Europe are showing up in animals which never had feed containing animal by-products. For all they know it might be an airborne infection.

Current plans in Europe are to try to let it play itself out my banning all feeds with animal by-products (soybeans will be substituted, which should help the American farmer) and also banning the use of blood or bone meal as well.

You don't need to avoid beef. Simply find a local cattle farmer and buy one of their stock for processing into freezer beef. Normal practice at meat lockers/local processing plants is to grind up the tongue, heart and liver with the hamburger. Don't want them? They can be left out. Can't take it all yourself? Find others to split it with you. Just be prepared for a lot of hamburger. Of a 1,000 pound animal only 75 pounds end up as what would be considered high- end cuts, such as steaks.

Even cheaper would be to attend the local livestock auction and look for what are generally called 'junk' cows. I once saw a really nice looking Hereford with a cancer eye sell for $.025 a pound. Didn't even pay the auction and transportation cost.

Again, there has not been a single case of confirmed BSE in the U.S. or Canada in beef animals.

-- Ken S. in WC TN (scharabo@aol.com), December 07, 2000.


Well. my only response is this-YUCK! There are so many wonderful veggies, beans and grains, I think I'll leave the cancer-eye and/or spongebrain cows to a hardcore meat eater. Yuck.

-- Cathy Horn (hrnofplnty@yahoo.com), December 07, 2000.

I do eat beef from time to time, but after Ken's comments guess I will stop that and stick to game meat only. Not hard as my animal intake is currently is 95% from the wild or range (reservation) run sheep with over half being from birds. The only time I eat beef is when I am in the city or rarely when traveling.

-- JLS in NW AZ (stalkingbull007@AOL.com), December 07, 2000.

ANOTHER reason we don't buy beef...I will stick to venison/chicken/rabbit, thank you very much. Besides, we have eaten venison exclusively for so long (haven't bought beef in 3-4 years), that we don't care for the flavor/mouthfeel of a greasy burger or a slippery steak. Just doesn't sit well anymore - too rich for my blood.

-- Judi (ddecaro@snet.net), December 07, 2000.


I'm usually a lurker in these pages but this ones close to home. First of all I agree with a lot of the article above. We moved to our country home a few years back and started a freezer beef operation as our family venture. I love beef and was determined to provide a product people did not have to worry about containing contaminants. You cant imagine the difficulty in finding feed that not only contains no hormones or antibiotics but no geneticly modified grains. It is a never ending search for quality feed. I take heat from other farmers and vets because I could castrate and implant my steers to increase gains. At what expense? Greed has corrupted our food chain with contaminants. I have no real evidence but believe that the growth hormones used in most commercial operations have a terrible impact on us. We are a nation of obese persons who appear to mature earlier every generation. I cant help but believe in the food chain theory. When I cant raise these animals profitably without the hormones and antibiotics I will quit. Beef is not the only meat in the market impacted by these practices. It's great to be able to raise what you eat, especailly for a confessed carnivore.

-- Bob (bksl@cyberback.com), December 07, 2000.

Ken-what I read wasn't a condemnation of beef but of feedlot beef.I eat venison.Our farmer who raised beef cattle for breeding stock,also ate venison.He said he wouldn't eat anything from the feedlot bc he saw firsthand what was there.Feedlot beef is also why there is the push for irradiated meat, as we discussed in another thread.

On mad cow disease-actually we received info from our states Extension Service recently indicating that a form of JaKobs disease has been in PA dairy herds for some time now,and sick dairy cows were shipped to other states.We were told to be on the lookout.I can dig up the info if you are interested.

It also said a possible link to eating this tainted meat and Khron's disease in Humans exists.We lived in central PA during this time, the school kids got some pretty awful meat-I helped cook burgers one day and just abt gagged-and my stepson now has a definite Khron's disease diagnosis and was very, very, ill.He is only in his mid 20's.It's a disqualifying condition,for him, as a USAF air traffic controller.

We've not be spared.

-- sharon wt (wildflower@ekyol.com), December 07, 2000.


The Guardian Weekly 30-11-2000

Features

Copper-bottomed answer to mad cow disease?

There may be a simple explanation for BSE, argues George Monbiot

The most interesting aspect of France's BSE scandal is that it makes no sense at all. Britain stopped exporting contaminated cattle feed to Europe in 1991 (though it continued sending it to the third world until 1996). In most other European Union countries cases have already peaked and declined, as expected. But in France the number of infected animals has doubled in the past year. It is impossible to see how this pattern could result from the export of British bone meal.

The transmission of BSE has never been satisfactorily explained by the prevailing theory. The consumption of meat and bone meal from infected cows has doubtless played an important role. Yet this alone fails to account for the huge numbers ofcattle in Britain that continued to become infected after most contaminated feed had been removed from the food chain. The latest research on the human form of the disease, vCJD, published four weeks ago, failed to find any link with the consumption of infected beef.

You might imagine that when its theory isn't working, a government would wish to test the alternatives. But the British government has so far sought only to attack a hypothesis that does appear to fit the facts. Since 1988 a Somerset farmer, Mark Purdey, has been arguing that scientists have overlooked the root causes of BSE. Self-taught and self-financed, he has studied the brain's complex biochemical pathways, and this year published a groundbreaking paper in a respected medical journal. His reward is to have been reviled, misrepresented and physically attacked.

Prions, the brain proteins whose alteration seems to be responsible for BSE, are designed to protect the brain from the oxidising properties of chemicals activated by dangerous agents such as ultraviolet light, Purdey argues. When, he suggests, the prion proteins are exposed to too little copper and too much manganese, the manganese takes the place of the copper that the prion normally binds to. The protein becomes distorted and loses its function.

BSE arose in British herds in the 80s, Purdey asserts, because the Ministry of Agriculture started forcing all cattle farmers to treat their animals with an organophosphate pesticide called phosmet, at far higher doses than are used elsewhere in the world. The pesticide had to be poured along the line of the spinal cord. Phosmet, Purdey has shown, captures copper. At the same time cattle feed was being supplemented with chicken manure, from birds dosed with manganese to increase their egg yield. The prion proteins in the cows' brains were both deprived of copper and dosed with manganese. In France the use of phosmet first became mandatory in Brittany. Twenty of France's initial 28 cases of BSE emerged there. BSE's subsequent spread, Purdey maintains, mirrors the use of the pesticide.

Poisoning by similar means may explain the distribution of the human form of the disease. Of the two main clusters of vCJD in Britain one, in Kent, is in the middle of a fruit- and hop-growing area where huge quantities of organophosphates and manganese-based fungicides are used. The other is in Queniborough in Leicestershire, whose dyeworks (until they caught fire a few years ago, spraying chemicals over the village) used to dump some of their residues into the sewerage system, Purdey alleges. The sewage was spread over the fields. Dyeworks use shedloads of manganese.

Purdey has tested his theory on BSE and CJD clusters in Iceland, the United States, Slovakia and Sardinia. He found that people and animals had been exposed to deficiencies of copper and surfeits of manganese. Most of the clusters, intriguingly, are in mountainous areas, where levels of ultraviolet light are high.

But the most compelling evidence in support of his hypothesis comes from a paper published by a team of biochemists at Cambridge University this year. They found that when copper was substituted by manganese in prion proteins, the prions adopted precisely the distinguishing features that identify the infective agent in BSE.

If Purdey is right, he deserves a Nobel Prize for medicine. Instead he has been shot at, his phone lines have been cut, and his house has been burned down. The Ministry of Agriculture, which for 50 years has had a dangerously close relationship with the agrochemical industry, has repeatedly sought to discredit him. Suddenly, however, its tone has changed, and it has now promised to start funding his research. The families of the French victims of CJD are threatening to sue the British government, and it desperately needs an alternative transmission theory.

With funding on its way, and new evidence accumulating every month, a self-educated dairy farmer may be about to overturn the entire body of scientific research on the biggest public health scandal of modern times.

-- Earthmama (earthmama48@yahoo.com), December 07, 2000.


Earthmama, I have a question for you. Isn't food cooked in copper pans considered detrimental to good human health? Seems as I remember reading about problems in the American colonial times due to copper or brass cookware.

-- JLS in NW AZ (stalkingbull007@AOL.com), December 07, 2000.

Copper pots, when coming in contact with acidic foods can cause nausea, vomiting and diarrhea , which is why they are often lined inside with some other metal, usually stainless steel. I am not aware of problems with brass.

-- Earthmama (earthmama48@yahoo.com), December 07, 2000.


Earthmama, Interesting. Brass is an alloy of copper and zinc, in the 60-40 range. Some of the better copper pots were lined with tin in the American colonial period (maybe later also). Pots made for the Indian trade were made of brass. I always thought because they were cheaper to make, surely not for health reasons. Guess I will have to research this a little. Thanks for your response.

-- JLS in NW AZ (stalkingbull007@AOL.com), December 07, 2000.

Earthmama:

Purdey's theory makes sense if used in the context low copper/high magnesium doesn't directly cause BSE (or vCJD), rather than it made cattle susceptible to it, some more so than others as normally only a couple of head in a herd came down with it. The susceptibility was triggered when the cows came into contact with scrapies from the sheep carcasses. Same rational could apply to humans, with it being triggered in a relatively few when exposed to BSE-tainted meat.

Maybe 20-years ago there was a secretary in another office a friend was dating. She started to suffer hand tremors and slight body tremors also. She was found to have, as I recall, Wilson's disease, which is a deficiency of copper.

On only eating wild game, deer, elk and squirrels have their own form of BSE.

-- Ken S. in WC TN (scharabo@aol.com), December 08, 2000.


And, oh, by the way. Organic beef in France is selling for twice that of supermarket beef. While there was a brief decline in beef consumption when the scare started, demand has returned to normal.

When England banned the sale of any beef on the bone, a blackmarket for it sprang up.

-- Ken S. in WC TN (scharabo@aol.com), December 08, 2000.


Yes Ken BSE has been in wild game.A problem, if you eat the brains and other spinal tissue.Squirrel brain is a speciality here for example.We do not eat this,however,, and we butcher our own so we know what goes into it.From all standpoints, I'm more comfortable with what I raised and processed myself, including wild game.

-- sharon wt (wildflower@ekyol.com), December 08, 2000.

Sharon:

What is the standard procedure for butchering a large animal? It is hung by back legs, skinned and gutted, the head removed and then the spine is cut down the middle. Whatever method is used, bits of spinal tissue will get on surrounding areas. Not everyone is thorough about washing the sides afterwards to remove this spinal cord bits.

Be careful out there.

-- Ken S. in WC TN (scharabo@aol.com), December 08, 2000.



You are right Ken to warn people to be careful.Nick says he doesn't cut the spine,and we do wash everything off anyway.Guess we're just kinda fussy!

-- sharon wt (wildflower@ekyol.com), December 08, 2000.

What should we do? Wait till there is confirmation of BSE beef in this country? What about all the beef we IMPORT? Should we give them an exemption?

Organically raised anything is better for you.And our feed lots have been grinding bone meal and feeding to our cattle for a long time.

Wonder why BSE hasn't showed up in jelitin yet?(jello)

-- hillbilly (internethillbilly@hotmail.com), December 08, 2000.


Note that Iceland Supermarkets has made a commitment to sell organics at the price of factory-farmed food. www.iceland.com.uk They are importing much of it. Anyone interested in making a buck selling organics might contact them.

-- Bob Blessum - Steubenville, OH (robertblessum@netscape.com), December 09, 2000.

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