I am glad I quit eating meat long, long ago and far away.

For those of you who still partake, or have eaten meat in the last five or ten years, or who have gotten, or expect to get, blood transfusions, you should educate yourselves on this topic.

Here is an excerpt from an American Red Cross explanation of this potentially widespread problem:

It is unclear as to whether this now small-scale human epidemic which has thus far spared our continent will remain small and contained, or will become a major global epidemic in the years ahead. Without a reliable blood test to detect those infected but not yet clinically ill, we have no knowledge of the size of the human reservoir of vCJD that currently exists in any population. Since people travel widely throughout the world that reservoir is not likely to be limited in any one place.

For the rest of the story, go to: http://www.redcross.org/services/biomed/blood/supply/tse/bsep olicy.html

This is very seriously scary shit!

JOJ

-- jumpoff joe (jumpoff@ecoweb.net), July 27, 2001

Answers

Response to mad cow

You got a space in the middle of the URL. It should be http://www.redcross.org/services/biomed/blood/supply/tse/bsepolicy.htm l

-- Don Armstrong (darmst@yahoo.com.au), July 27, 2001.

Response to mad cow

So did I. I think posting it here does it on a line break unless you forcibly remove the space that is automatically inserted. I think this is right now.

http://www.redcross.org/services/biomed/blood/supply/tse/bsepolicy.htm l

-- Don Armstrong (darmst@yahoo.com.au), July 27, 2001.

Response to mad cow

No - not going to fight it any longer - people, copy and paste my link, but delete the space that has been inserted between "m" and "l" in ".html" at the end there before you use it.

-- Don Armstrong (darmst@yahoo.com.au), July 27, 2001.

I'm not so sure this scares me just yet because the health impact upon humans is still largely a poorly understood problem. If we look at the issues concerning humans, Crutzfeld Jacobs disease, the human manifestation of BSE, is hardly an "epidemic." I'm not sure there are any documented cases in the USA, and in Britain (used to live there) I think there were about 90 documented cases out of a population of about 60 million! Hardly an epidemic. There isn't even any hard core evidence that BSE causes Crutzfeld Jacobs disease in humans. It was my understanding that the Red Cross is being cautious because not enough is known about this problem and if it can transmitted in blood. They certainly learned from AIDS and want to err on the side of caution.

What we can learn from this is to treat animals well by feeding them as they are meant to be fed in nature, give more power to small, ethical, organic producers of meat, and try to alter our economic support of careless, mass consumerism (e.g., buy organic or raise your own food). This whole BSE problem is a manifestation of poor (agro-superpower) farming practices.

-- amy (acook@in4web.com), July 27, 2001.

Amy, I totally agree with you. I wan't trying to start a panic, although I do think we, as a society, should be taking more precautions than we are. Certainly, not tricking cows into becoming carnivores is a no brainer (oops).

I read an article a year or so ago, in Atlantic Mag (I think). The article stated that, while England has instituted strick prohibition against marketing cow brains and spinal column tissue, packing plants in the USA continue to go so far as to apply high pressure solvent ot spinal columns to remove every last drop of tissue.

I think part of the problem is greed, and part of it is that it is necessary to maximize production from every source in order to feed our overpopulated world.

Although you're right about lack of info on this disease, you may have noted that it is thought that there is at least a five year incubation period before the disease shows up in humans. The question is how many people ate contaminated meat within the last five or ten years, and how many who did so are going to come down with the disease? I think that's why the Red Cross article even MENTIONS "major global epidemic in the years ahead".

Don, thanks for sleuthing the weird way my url was transmitted to the post.

JOJ

-- jumpoff joe (jumpoff@ecoweb.net), July 27, 2001.

here's the link:

redcross link

for more info go visit the GICC forum run on this server.

GICC:food subsection

-- (perry@ofuzzy1.com), July 27, 2001.