GOOD GOLLY, MISS MOLLY!

Add Molly Ivins to the list of those who advocate "just saying no" over the BSE screwup: "If you must eat while Republicans control both the White House and Congress," she advises, "you may want to consider becoming a vegetarian." It's also nice that she gives a shout-out to one of Meat Facts' favorite topics, saying that "Feces is feces whether it's fibrous or not" and topping that "gross" reference with the comment that "'gross' is pretty close to scientifically accurate when it comes to the Bush performance on protecting the meat supply."
UPDATE 1/16: More Just-Say-No's: Stanley Bing swears off beef, even if flippantly: "I guess we have to take a long look at the one party that makes the most sense: cows. They're the ones who got it first. They're giving it to us. They're mad as hell, and I'm not going to eat them anymore." and on a more thoughtful level, a Washington state newspaper notes the current crisis "makes some careful, some vegan:" "It's one of the main reasons I decided to go vegan," said Julie Waller, 37, who was shopping at the Safeway in Tumwater. "I would be concerned if I was still eating meat." Another shopper, Janice Simon, 40, said mad cow disease is a reason to be extra careful. "I won't let my son eat beef because of it," she said.

MORE ALARMS

Last Wednesday, Michael Greger's thorough and alarming analysis of the CJD risk among Americans from possible BSE in the food supply was published on the Web (and linked here, of course), calling for increased CDC attention to the issue. Coincidentally (?) the next day, the CDC "urged doctors to be on the lookout for suspect cases of mad cow disease in humans." What, are the CDC jumping on the "alarmist" bandwagon too? If so, it's gonna be crowded, what with people such as Wisconsin's state veterinarian saying that he "believes more cases will be found in cattle in America," as well as Northeastern University professor of chemistry Ira Krull, who says "there are many more undocumented cases just waiting to be discovered," adding: "The American public should be concerned. At this moment, there is contaminated beef sitting in grocery stores and personal freezers across the country," said Krull. Gosh, isn't it funny how actual scientists seem to have a slightly different view of this than the National Cattlemen's Beef Alumni Association USDA?
UPDATE 1/13: Here's an alarming story, "Mad cow danger may even be bigger," which is basically a rewrite of Greger's piece from last week - but if it makes you feel better to hear it coming from a credentialed journalist, well, here you go.
UPDATE 1/18: New research indicates human form of mad cow more complex than first thought, canada.com declares, detailing the crusade of Dr. Laura Manuelidis, head of neuropathology at Yale University, to get the CDC to look at the possibility that BSE causes "classical" as well as "new variant" CJD.

GOT MAD MILK?

I almost never link to Yahoo, because their stuff only stays at a given address for a few days, but what the hell is this? Teamsters Call on Federal Agencies to Ban 'Mad Cow Milk' - "Teamsters' Dairy Conference Director Fred Gegare yesterday petitioned the U.S. Secretaries of Agriculture and Health & Human Services to immediately ban the distribution of milk associated with BSE outbreak in the Pacific Northwest." Yes, it's just a press release - from the Teamsters! I dunno - there's got to be more to the story than the fact that the UK banned milk from Mad Cows when they had their outbreak. Anybody? Anybody?

RESEARCHER: ATKINS CAN KILL YOU

OK, the first name of the author of this article might make you wonder, but in Australia, a dietician and researcher has determined, after analyzing more than 100 studies worldwide, that low-carb diets "push the body into starvation mode, affecting the way the heart beats." In addition to a troubling number of sudden deaths of people on low-carb diets, "Dr Crowe's analysis found there was little benefit from going on the Atkins or any other strict low- carbohydrate diet. 'There are no major advantages and there are quite a few disadvantages that we know such as constipation, dehydration and so the list goes on with possible longer term side effects and risks,' he said."

MAD COW GOT YOU DOWN? JUST SWITCH TO ...

That's right, once again a warning about another kind of fish that was previously deemed safe. Researchers today said that farmed salmon is loaded with toxic chemicals, ten times as much as wild salmon. We're talking dioxin, we're talking PCBs. Deadly stuff, and especially vexing considering that farmed salmon is a lousy source of Omega-3s. "Farmed salmon taken from markets in Frankfurt, Edinburgh, Paris, London, Oslo, Boston, San Francisco, and Toronto had the highest levels, and the researchers said consumers should eat no more than one-half to one meal (4 to 8 ounces, uncooked) of salmon per month. Farmed salmon from supermarkets in Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., Seattle, Chicago, New York and Vancouver had toxins high enough to suggest that people eat no more than two salmon meals a month." So on average, the lowdown: Don't eat salmon more than once a month.

COMPLETELY SAFE, BUT NOT FOR KIDS

Gosh, it's funny how schools are either reassuring us that their meat never came 'downer' cows or removing beef entirely from their menus, since there was "no risk" from that "one single cow" eaten by U.S. consumers. In Colorado, Jefferson County schools are banning beef, as are elementary and middle schools in Aspen. The administrator in charge of the latter decision said, "I know the government says beef is safe, but I don't believe the government has much credibility right now." Additionally, in Washington state, the superintendent of the Toppenish School District pulled beef from his schools' menus. But of course the fast-food-based meals many of these schools still serve are far from being "no-risk" as well.

IS BSE ALREADY KILLING AMERICANS?

That's an alarmist question, almost cartoonish in its outrageous implications. Yet it's one that is now being raised with increasing candor and authority. ABC news put it as gently as possible: Some Experts Say Scientists Should Be Pressing to Make Sure Beef Isn't Causing Mad Cow in Humans (lede: "Scientists have yet to document a single U.S. case of someone getting the human version of mad cow disease from contaminated beef. Then again, they might not be looking hard enough") and mentioned some anecdotal evidence about a cluster of sporadic CJD in New Jersey. Then the Inquirer covered that case in a little more detail, as a "local link" story. But the New Jersey "anecdotal evidence" is only mentioned offhand in this meticulously documented broadside from the indefatiguable Dr. Michael Greger. In "Could Mad Cow Disease Already be Killing Thousands of Americans Every Year?" Greger lays out the reasons we cannot possibly answer "no" with any assurance, and weaves his examination of the possibility of a BSE-sporadic CJD correlation with authoritative warnings on CJD from the likes of Nobel Prize winners, the heads of CJD surveillance centers, and Paul Brown, medical director for the National Institutes of Health - who says bluntly that "No one has looked for CJD systematically in the U.S. Ever." So, uh, yeah, they might not be looking hard enough.

TEST ALL CATTLE FOR BSE

That's the clarion call that the cattle industry hopes will fade away. But so far it's not. Back in December Dennis Kucinich proposed congressional legislation to test all downer cows (before the USDA said it would ban them from the food chain) as well as other safety initiatives that may wind up in the pipeline before he can get to them. Now another congressman, Rep. Miller, is proposing testing for BSE every cow that's slaughtered in the U.S. Beef people don't like this one bit, reaching for their traditional arsenal of grand overstatements: "The vast majority of the cattle slaughtered in the United States are under 30 months of age and perfectly healthy, and these animals are not at risk for BSE," Higgins said. But see, that's a lie. There are plenty of cattle under 30 months that are "at rist for BSE," like the latest two in Japan, who were so much at risk that they actually had it. Wonder how much longer these fibs will go unchallenged.

TRASHING USDA: NOT JUST FOR VEGANS ANYMORE

"It certainly doesn't take a raging vegan to figure out that USDA guidelines fall somewhere short of safe and sound domestic policy," says an SF Gate editorial, noting that "the agency has long been dominated by the industry it is supposed to regulate."

No, this is beyond the "raging vegan" stage. Now that additional cows are being quarantined and killed to cover up for shoddy bookkeeping while consumers are still denied basic information about the source of tainted food, more and more mainstream critics are saying what we've been saying all along. BusinessWeek says that "Despite USDA reassurances, America's beef supply -- and its citizens -- are at risk." Eric Schlosser's NYTimes op-ed is a virtual rewrite of Michael Greger's New Year's Eve piece And Marion Nestle states that consumers "should express their distress about the current meat situation and just say no." Just say no? Hmmmmm. Maybe it's good sense that turns you into a raging vegan!

SHOW ME THE DOCUMENTS

The meat industry and its lackeys are doing a terrific job at decrying the "hysteria" about Mad Cow that the media are supposedly fomenting, even though a quick trip to Google News shows that most media coverage of the "effects" of the "scare" has been to show how little "scare" there is. Still, there are a couple wild-eyed granola-crunching media types coming down hard on the USDA: The Wall Street Journal, for example, details exactly why the new measures are still not enough to protect consumers, including the facts that 1) Cows still eat the ground-up remains of other animals, 2) Bovine blood products are fed to calves, and 3) Few animals are tested for BSE. (All points were made more fully and conclusively by Michael Greger)."So what can consumers do?" The WSJ asks, responding, "Of course, the ultimate protection is to stop eating beef."

And the (Madison) Capital Times slams Veneman's USDA with refreshing candor: "Ann Veneman's subservience to the agribusiness interests she once served as a lobbyist is no longer merely troublesome. It's dangerous." As to the "low-risk"/"no-risk" reassurances, "Veneman has no idea whether she is right." The editorial concludes that "By failing to acknowledge genuine concerns regarding BSE, and by failing even now to respond to those concerns, Veneman has failed U.S. farmers and consumers. She should be ashamed, and the rest of us should be looking for better sources of information about the safety of our food supply."

So, yeah, I'm one of those people looking for better sources of information than mealy-mouthed platitudes from someone everyone in America now knows is acting out of a clear conflict of interest. I want to see documents. Here's what I'd like to see - and what I think every person in America deserves to have access to immediately:

Those documents of Mad Cow testing for 2002 and 2003 that to the best of my knowledge have still not been released to UPI or the public. If the bedrock of the "no big deal" argument is that this is just one cow, let's see that backed up, hmmm?

The exact source of the claim that there are about 200,000 downer cattle per year in the U.S. - since the National Market Cow and Bull Audit supposedly puts the number at 1.8 million a year... kind of a big difference.

All pieces of the paper trail linking the cow that was sold to American consumers as meat to a Canadian cow that's conveniently six years old. Suffice to say this story still seems to have a lot of odd discrepancies... brucellosis, anyone?

The paperwork that backs up widely-parroted claims that the rate of compliance with the 1997 feed ban is now at "99.9 percent" - given that in 2000 it was less than 75%, and in 2002, the GAO said the FDA "has been using inaccurate, incomplete, and unreliable data to track and oversee feed ban compliance." Where does this number (it's like 100%, see, only if there's another screw-up they can say, "well, that came from that .1% that was in non-compliance") come from? Actual inspections? Self-assessment? Wild stab in the dark? Or most likely, a P.R. meeting? Let's see the data!

There are other documents, but if we could just see all of these immediately, I'd feel the people in charge of this are at least playing by some of the rules.

UPDATE 1/6: OK, even though no documents have been released to the public, the US and Canada both agree that the cow's DNA matches, so I'll check that one - the one that was already taken as fact anyway - off the list. One down, three to go...

WHEN DOWNERS ARE OUTLAWED, ONLY OUTLAWS WILL TAKE DOWNERS

See, here's what I don't understand. In an article entitled, "Ban on sale of 'downer' cattle may bring own hazard," a frequently-cited problem is raised: "This (detection) never would have happened if the farmer in question would have shut up, shot the animal and buried it," said John McBride, director of information for the national network of livestock auction houses. So... we should avoid a system of greater scrutiny because that will make ranchers more duplicitous? More laws will just drive them to break the law more often? Um, I guess no one else has said this, but, gee, shouldn't such wanton, venal, anti-social destruction of evidence be A FELONY? Why do we let animal industries get away with utter garbage like this? No really, I want to know.

BRAVO RENDELL

Ed Rendell is still struggling to wear the larger-size britches he was issued as Governor of Pennsylvania, and is finding it's not quite as simple as being mayor. BUT at least he had the balls to veto the "let factory farms do whatever they want" bill that the PA legislature had snuck through...John Hanger, president of PennFuture, summed it up: "People understand the stench from this legislation." In another article, Hanger offers that "Rendell proved that he is a true statesman" with this action. While "proved" is a little strong, it's certainly a welcome indicator.

END-OF-YEAR CLEARANCE

In preparation for more Mad Cow news in 2004, here are some quick hits on items I had lying around that are about to go stale:

Last performing circus bear in United Kingdom finds sanctuary in Canada: "The [animal] circus has been going so rapidly out of fashion in the U.K., people can't remember the last time they saw a bear at the circus," said Victor Watkins, director of wildlife in London for the World Society for the Protection of Animals. "It's one bear, but it really makes a lot of people aware of the issue. Hopefully, we'll get more circuses around the world to realize bears don't belong there."

Tufts University says it's impossible to follow the Atkins diet healthfully: So, as to whether it's possible to follow the Atkins diet healthfully or tweak it to make it safe and healthful, the answers are no and no.

Meat recalled for non-BSE, non-E.Coli reasons: Tyson frozen grilled chicken patties with pieces of metal; meat dumplings with pieces of glass; Taco Bell ground beef with "a small, hard object" in the meat; and 26,600 pounds ground beef mislabeled as "irradiated" but isn't.

Researchers say wolves could help curb Chronic Wasting Disease; unfortunately, we're too busy killing them all off to notice.

Magnesium fights diabetes: "New research suggests that nuts, grains and leafy green vegetables, foods high in magnesium, may keep diabetes at bay."

Dairy monsters: The UK's Guardian looks at the growing awareness that milk isn't the health food we were told it was.

And I try to avoid giving additional attention to shameless bids for attention, but this latest PETA stunt is beyond the pale and needs to be condemned in the most absolute terms. Stay the hell away from kids, you idiots!
Hopefully they'll get a clue in 2004... along with meat-eaters... hopefully.

USDA: WE WERE THISCLOSE TO BANNING DOWNER MEAT, REALLY!

Even though our cattle-slaughter practices are completely safe (remember, there's no risk), the USDA today suddenly announced a ban on meat from 'downer' cows - something vegetarian groups have been fighting for in court for years, and which the USDA and the Bush administration have steadfastly opposed. This is part of a package of sweeping anti-BSE reforms the agency, by a strange coincidence, had been just about to get around to when this whole thing blew up ("Veneman said the announced changes have been planned for a while." Uh-huh.) It's yet another coincidence that keeping downers out of the food supply means they don't have to test them - er, unless they want Japan to start importing beef again...

Two quick items you may have missed: 1) The Village Voice laid it out on the table today with "The simple fact is the meat inspection system isn't any good and anybody who even attempts to stand up to the Big Boy ranchers does so at his or her peril," introducing us to Bill Lehman, a former inspector, who described his duties thusly: "I merely walk to the back of the truck. That's all I'm allowed to do. Whether there's boxed meat or carcasses in the truck, I can't touch the boxes. I can't open the boxes. I can't use a flashlight. I can't walk into the truck. I can only look at what is visible in the back of the trailer." Even so, he himself rejected up to 2.3 million pounds annually for reasons such as "pus-filled abscesses, sticky layers of bacteria leaving a stench, obvious fecal contamination, stains, metal shavings, blood, bruises, hair, hide, chemical residues, salmonella, added substances, and advanced disease symptoms." Gee, hope he didn't miss any in the corner of the truck.

And 2) here's some news: Animal testing is bogus! That is, the results found in one species can't be extrapolated to another. This comes from a Seattle Times article in which Jim Cullor, director of the University of California, Davis, veterinary-research center, says there's "almost no chance of getting sick." The "almost" qualifier, the Times notes, "reflects evidence the infectious agent is found in blood. Recent studies have also found it in mouse muscle, though Cullor says that's not a cause for concern. "With all due respect, a mouse is not a cow. A mouse is not a human." Oh! Well, now we know.

HOW MUCH RISK IS NO RISK?

No Risk From Mad Cow Meat, U.S. Says Whew! That was a close one, because here I had thought there might be a risk, what with all the meat from that slaughtered mad cow getting eaten by consumers and all.

Agriculture Department officials maintain, meanwhile, there is no health risk to consumers. Great. No health risk. "essentially zero." Oh, OK. Essentially.

They seem to be using "no risk" in place of "low risk," since that term is now busted from its overuse last year. Remember when there was such a "low risk" of Mad Cow in the US. that the USDA could keep touting its achievement in maintaining that "firewall?"

Study Shows Mad Cow Prevention Is Working in the U.S A 2002 Harvard study "showed that early protection systems put into place by the Department of Agriculture (USDA) and Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) have been largely responsible for keeping BSE out of the U.S." - except that BSE was already in the U.S. at this time, wasn't it? - "and would prevent it from spreading if it ever did enter the country." Right. I mean, sure, it might get to a couple hundred groceries and hundreds of consumers across eight states, but not to Guam. Never Guam.

The NYT simplifies the risk complex into two basic questions:

1. Did my family eat any of that cow, and, if so, will it hurt them?

2. Never mind that one cow — how many others are out there?

A short, somewhat flippant answer provided to #2: "finding two positives in roughly 40,000 recent tests would suggest that there could be about 1,750 positive animals in the 35 million slaughtered each year," suggests Dr. Donald Berry, chairman of the biostatistics department at the University of Texas's cancer research center.

As to whether anybody ate them, Gary Weber, that he says he thought that, like most ground beef, the batch would have been frozen for transit. OK - is this a suggestion something was awry? 'Frozen' as in frozen or 'frozen ' as in 'stopped?' '"I'd hazard a guess that some of it has been consumed." Nonetheless, even if the meat was eaten, the risk to humans seems low.'

Oh, now it seems low, does it? So, another level of qualification - it may not even be low! But at least it seems low. This is a long way from "no health risk to consumers," isn't it?

And in another interesting note...

'On the larger question - how many other cows have the disease - Dr. DeHaven said the department believed that "the worst-case scenario is the disease exists in the United States at a very low prevalence."'

Oh, that's the worst it could possibly get, huh? Gosh, how much you want to bet it gets exactly that bad?

HEY, LOOK OVER THERE!

As could be predicted, the USDA's strategy for containing the Mad Cow bombshell is to point fingers somewhere else - not in any meaningful sense, of course (i.e. with peer-reviewed evidence), only as a means of temporary distraction. Temporary, that is, and specifically timed for when the US stock exchanges open on Monday morning. Whether or not the cow turns out to actually be from Canada (and isn't it funny that just 36 hours ago it was likely to take "weeks" to definitively track down where the cow came from?), if that "good news" is the story of record on Monday morning, the chance of a beef market crash is limited. Very savvy.

Meanwhile, of course, the question of the cow's birthplace is utterly irrelevant to the danger posed to Americans. 'Mad Cow in the US' doesn't just mean a sick cow happened to wander across our national border. In this case, it means a cow was raised for meat here in the US, was slaughtered here, was sold as meat to consumers in several US states, and was almost certainly unknowingly eaten by US consumers. No birthplace-switcheroo is going to change that. If only that continues to happen, US beef is still in a heap of trouble.

For one thing, this development has got some families of CJD victims openly questioning whether the human form of the disease has already hit the United States, noting that the government has been "lax in its testing possible links and enforcing safety standards." And the lie that there's "no evidence" the disease can be found outside of brain and spinal tissue is being publicly debunked: "Cattle tissues known to carry the infectious agents behind mad cow disease are making it into the nation's meat supply despite industry and government claims to the contrary," notes the Rocky Mountain News.

Additionally, the New York Times is slowwwwly starting to look into how thoroughly our beef-money-saturated public legislature has fallen down on the job. In a Sunday spread, the Times notes - without quite connecting the dots - that Nobel Prize-winning neurologist Stanley Prusiner (who won for discovering the prions behind BSE and CJD) has long said Mad Cow was already here and we should be vigourously testing for it. So did politicians listen to the world's greatest expert on the disease (who also opines in the Times article that the USDA still "believes its own propaganda," and that using cow blood as a milk replacer is "a really stupid idea") in determining industry safeguards? No, what would he know? They listened to folks like US Rep. Charles W. Stenholm (D-Texas), a rancher himself, who claimed that the government's screening program was tight enough to prevent any problems, and baldly stated that a downer cow in a photo "will never find its way into the food chain. Period."

This is the way it's been - actual scientific experts such as Dr. Michael Greger, who lays out all the facts and documentation of how sloppy, unreliable and dangerous this system is, were largely ignored because after all, their judgement was clouded by their ties to the organic food movement and their veganism. But someone who stands to make money off of continued bad practices, who stands there and lies outright to the American public in order to keep profiting from animal slaughter, that's an "objective" source. This happens across the board, and if it changes even slightly because of this news, that will at least be one silver lining - for America, that is, not for US Beef, which I must again point out is a separate entity.

DID COWS IN OTHER STATES EAT SAME BSE FEED?

"Cattle in other states may have eaten the same contaminated feed that infected a Washington state Holstein with mad cow disease," begins this Washington Post story, alarmingly enough, then comes the punch line: "but investigators who want to track the infection to its source are being confounded by the lack of an organized system that would lead them to the herd where the cow was born."

Of course. We're talking about a system overseen by the USDA after all, and this is their M.O. to a T. Keep the accountability of the individual producers (meaning massive factory farm operations) low and the resulting risk to the public high. Remember, "job one is to sell more beef for a better price."

(A side note, the flip side of "job one," is that they're now quarantining possibly-infected calves the cow had had, and one of the births was the cause of the animal's trip to the slaughterhouse - "the birth caused injuries that made the Holstein unprofitable to the farm, prompting it to be shipped to the slaughterhouse on Dec. 9." Yes, being a mother - its job description - made this animal something to throw away. That's yer "job one" industry, all right!)

As the story broke, officials worked to muddy public perception of how momentous this is, keeping the question open of whether any of the animal would have actually been sold to and eaten by anybody. "Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman said the slaughtered cow was screened earlier this month and any diseased parts were removed before they could enter the food supply and infect humans." Isn't that reassuring? But inaccurate. Parts that would be definitely diseased may have been removed. But we don't know, as I pointed out below, what other parts may be diseased. That's why a 10,000-pound recall involving over hundreds of grocery stores was in order, and why people who ate it, or may have eaten it, deserve more accountability both on the cow's origin and the nature of its illness. Mike Read, a spokesman for WinCo Foods, where some customers have returned meat for a refund, related that others "have called in and said, 'I purchased it, and I have already eaten it and what should I do?'"

The only good answer is, sit there and hope other people learn from your mistake. Because it may unfortunately be too late for you to do anything. But it's not too late for the rest of the American public to stop buying beef.

YES, VIRGINIA, MAD COW IS HERE

Well, it's been less than a week since I conjectured that Mad Cow was already here and our government knew it. Now it's all over the news - the news, by the way, that massive portions of the U.S. are not paying attention to because it's Christmas, fer chrissake! Huh. Isn't that a coincidence.

Note that the story linked above has the requisite blather about how beef is completely safe, from meat industry officials, with no balancing commentary from anyone stronger than CSPI or Consumer Reports. Assertions such as "The infectious agent is only found in the central nervous system tissue," which have been shown to be untrue, are passed on to news consumers as gospel. We'll see how well the grand BS strategy works... who knows, it's worked before.

TEACHER SUSPENDED FOR MAKING STUDENTS DRINK MILK

It's a little more complicated than that, but not much. While it seems to be an obvious abuse of pedagogical power, the, er, experiment conducted by this teacher merely underscores how cow's milk can be an unwelcome presence in our bodies - not that this is news to Meat Facts readers.

It's also not news that adults push milk on kids who don't want it - this is just an extreme example. But you can find just about anywhere complaints that "my kids don't like milk" and testimonials to clever, innovative ways to trick the li'l ones into drinking it - and since This is That Time of the Year, let's not forget that half-a-century-old lyric about the well-known ways things are different at Christmastime - "Windows are dressed in ribbons of silk / And Junior drinks all of his milk!" Gee, maybe kids' natural antipathy towards cow's milk helps explain why there's so much more supply than demand when it comes to milk - all of which makes the concept of cloning animals for this purpose even more ridiculous. As Carol Tucker Foreman puts it, "Is it worth altering the basic nature of these animals just to make more milk? We have a surplus of milk."

I WON'T EAT ANYTHING THAT HAS A FACE

That seems to be the prevailing opinion among not only vegetarians but meat-eaters. In yet another case of a food animal escaping imminent slaughter and being rewarded with a new lease on life, the slaughterhouse agreed to donate the animal (after getting paid for expenses related to the great escape) to a sanctuary. The change of heart is summed up this way: "He put a face on food," Dorothy Davies said. "Looking at hamburger meat wrapped in a cellophane package is not the same as looking at that face." It's another great example of the hypocrisy inherent in meat-eating, namely: An animal that does something remarkable obviously has an individual will and personality, a face, but get rid of that face, and sure, I'll eat it right up.