Pink Slime and Mad Cow Just the Tip of the Iceberg

[marmar]

from Civil Eats:


Pink Slime and Mad Cow Just the Tip of the Iceberg

April 27th, 2012
By Paula Crossfield


Following on the heels of pink slime, mad cow disease (AKA bovine spongiform encephalopathy—or BSE) is back this week after a California dairy cow destined for a rendering plant that makes pet food was found to have the disease. So far, it looks like the beef industry is playing down the finding, hoping to dodge a loss in sales at home and abroad. The U.S. Department of Agriculture was quick to tell Americans that our food supply is entirely safe.

But the re-emergence of mad cow and the conversation around pink slime has re-opened questions about our food system. It has exposed how food safety falls inevitably through the cracks in a country where over 9 billion animals are being slaughtered per year and budgets for the departments that oversee these processes are being slashed. The incredible media coverage of both issues reflects a growing consumer interest in more transparency in what we’re eating and how it’s being produced.

While this is only the fourth case of mad cow in the U.S. to date, experts argue that finding it this time was a stroke of luck. Of the 34 million cows we slaughter annually in the U.S., 40,000 are being tested by USDA for the disease, down from nearly 500,000 in 2005—about one tenth of one percent.

Some would like the media focus on mad cow to be re-directed to other ongoing and serious food safety issues. Dr. Marion Nestle, professor of nutrition at New York University and author of Safe Food, is among those connecting this finding of mad cow to other unfortunately routine (and in some cases, deadly) food safety issues. “The risk of you getting this disease from eating beef is extremely small,” she said. .................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://civileats.com/2012/04/27/pink-slime-and-mad-cow-just-the-tip-of-the-iceberg/

[DCKit]

1. Just as Republicans are moving to further deregulate food safety.

File under: Really Bad Timing.

[CaliforniaPeggy]

9. It's not just bad timing.

It's also just plain bad. Planning, executing, what have you.

We need more inspections, not fewer, and done by professionals, not by the meat industry.

[4th law of robotics]

2. "Pink slime" was never found to be unsafe to eat

and this case appears to be spontaneous.

This is fearmongering.

[marmar]

3. If you had actually read the article, you'd see that the people quoted in it......

...... are more concerned about the everyday problems with the food system, more than pink slime or mad cow.

[4th law of robotics]

4. When you include a specific reference in your title

you might expect people to think your article is about that. No?

Using either of those things (in the title) to begin a discussion on why our food supply is unsafe is disingenuous.

[marmar]

5. It's the headline on the story at the link, n'est-ce pas?

[4th law of robotics]

6. I never said you were being disingenuous

merely that this title with this article is.

The author is at fault, obviously.

[pscot]

8. Use of the personal pronouns "you" and Your" in the header to post #4

then disavowing the implications of what you wrote, suggests that you are the one being disingenuous.

[4th law of robotics]

13. That's "you" in the general sense

that's just the way people talk.

[mojowork_n]

12. Playing "Either/Or" some mo', though.....

...your conclusion may be premature.

Mad Cow disease -- whatever the ultimate verdict on pink slime -- still looks like it merits attention.

Here's another recent article on that subject, which also reflects generally on U.S. food safety practices:

http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/04/26/americas-mad-cow-crisis/

[div class= "excerpt"]In the United States, dairy calves are still taken from their mothers and fed the blood and fat of dead cattle. This is no doubt a way to infect them with the mad cow disease that has now been incubating here for decades, spread through such animal feeding practices. No one knows how the latest dairy cow was infected, the fourth confirmed in the United States. Maybe it was nursed on cow’s blood. Perhaps it was fed feed containing cattle fat with traces of cattle protein. Or perhaps there is a mad cow disease in pigs in the United States, which simply has not been found yet, because pigs are not tested for it at all, even though pigs are fed both pig and cattle byproducts, and then the blood, fat and other waste parts of these pigs are fed to cattle.

All these U.S. cattle feeding methods are long banned and illegal in other countries that suffered through but eventually dealt properly with mad cow disease. Here, rather than stopping the transmission of the disease by stopping the cannibal feeding, mad cow is simply covered up with inadequate testing and very adequate public relations.

Reading further down, a very simple conclusion is drawn, and the reasons for it explained:

The prevention of mad cow disease is relatively simple. If your country has it, test each animal before it goes to slaughter to keep the diseased animals out of the food chain. Cheap, accurate and easy tests are now available in other countries but illegal here. Testing cattle both identifies the true extent of the disease, and keeps infected animals from being eaten in your sausage or hamburger. In this manner countries like Britain, Germany, France and Japan have controlled their problem through testing and a strict ban on cannibal feed.

Once mad cow disease moves into the human population of a country, all bets are off as to what could happen next. It’s a very slow disease, it develops invisibly over decades in someone who has been infected, and it is always fatal. We’ll know a lot more in fifty years, but the future looks worrisome. In Britain people are dying from mad cow disease, people who never consumed infected meat. They used medical products containing human blood, and that blood was infected because it was from infected people. There is no test to identify infectious prions, the causal agent, in blood.

[msongs]

7. I am so glad I do not eat dead cows...or live ones either :-) nt

[fascisthunter]

10. oh republicans are verrrry weird people

this is what they support.

[TNLib]

11. I'm glad I don't eat meat or Poultry

I do eat eggs, cheese and fish on occasion. I don't have any issues eating animals but I highly recommend eating vegetarian.
It's a more healthier life style
it's easier to reduce calories
and you don't have to worry about mad cow and poor quality meat ect...


I've lost 25lbs since I began a vegetarian/pescetarian diet.

[upi402]

14. The media is absent

and conservatives want even LESS regulatuion.

Be careful what you ask for Republitards!

OCA's organic bytes
- info on protecting yourself and general awareness about the corrupted food industry. Dangerous!

http://www.organicconsumers.org/bytes/ob326.htm