USDA in possibly lying about lack of severity of Mad Cow report shockah

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Mad-cow criminal probe to focus on case records

I've heard about this weeks ago, and was wondering when it would start bubbling up...

― donut bitch (donut), Thursday, 4 March 2004 19:31 (twenty-one years ago)

here I was freaking out about the saveloy I ate in London. This country sucks!

― Donna Brown (Donna Brown), Thursday, 4 March 2004 19:34 (twenty-one years ago)

After all these years, my mom's weird hysterical rantings about mad cows finally pans out, there will be no dealing with her now.

― Allyzay, Thursday, 4 March 2004 19:39 (twenty-one years ago)

My ex would always giggle at the term "mad cow". She thought it was so endearingly English (her dad is English/South African). She would always say in (in her best English accent) "Those cows are mad! They were down the pub all last night getting pissed!"

― Spencer Chow (spencermfi), Thursday, 4 March 2004 20:25 (twenty-one years ago)

mentalist cows!

― jody (Jody Beth Rosen), Thursday, 4 March 2004 20:30 (twenty-one years ago)

I'm just thinking about the possibility of a significant number of Alzheimer victim's actual having Mad Cow. Ugh...Bovinespongioform encephaliis, or something like that. I mean, how dissimilar are the symptons, really? They seem pretty close to me.

― sublimityeternal (sublimityeternal), Friday, 5 March 2004 18:48 (twenty-one years ago)

People have long tried to explain how humans contract the supposedly non-mad-cow variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease, when the obvious explanation is that it is mad cow.

― gabbneb (gabbneb), Friday, 5 March 2004 19:01 (twenty-one years ago)

two years pass...

U.S. slashes testing for mad-cow disease

I don't follow the logic here: "we hardly see any cows with the disease that we're testing for and should, in theory, never see, so we're going to stop testing, because we just don't see it happen."

Isn't that the reason you test for this?

I guess in brief: if you eat beef products in the U.S., be forewarned, folks.

― San Diva Gyna (and a Masala DOsaNUT on the side) (donut), Thursday, 20 July 2006 16:02 (nineteen years ago)

The logic is if they don't find any mad cow cases no one is going to ban their beef.

― Thermo Thinwall (Thermo Thinwall), Thursday, 20 July 2006 16:59 (nineteen years ago)

So glad Costco started carrying organic steaks.

― milo z (mlp), Thursday, 20 July 2006 17:02 (nineteen years ago)

Unfortunately, organic is no guarantee. Contamination at slaughter/post-slaughter handling is too much a possibility.

― Jaq (Jaq), Thursday, 20 July 2006 17:19 (nineteen years ago)

I pretty much never eat beef. With rare exceptions the only meat I eat is organic chicken, turkey, and um, Aidell's sausages.

― Shakey Mo Collier (Shakey Mo Collier), Thursday, 20 July 2006 17:27 (nineteen years ago)

How can BSE be transmitted in post-slaughter handling? It's transmitted through the food source or by blood (cow to calf) - organic animals by their nature aren't fed the chopped up remains of animals potentially infected by BSE.

― milo z (mlp), Thursday, 20 July 2006 17:31 (nineteen years ago)

Contamination from spinal/lymphatic/nervous system tissue from an infected animal slaughtered/handled in the same facility.

― Jaq (Jaq), Thursday, 20 July 2006 17:39 (nineteen years ago)

I'm not sure I'm understanding this - how can steak be contaminated by proximity? Ground beef, I could understand (and avoid eating at all costs), but I've never heard of BSE being passed on by handling. The food chain was always cited as the culprit.

― milo z (mlp), Thursday, 20 July 2006 17:43 (nineteen years ago)

Every source I can find points to organic being as BSE-safe as possible, up to and including slaughtering methods. One step beyond would be grass-fed beef, but that's way out of my price range. (flash-frozen Costco Sommers Organic New York Strips, 4@6oz for $10 I think, maybe it was a little more)

― milo z (mlp), Thursday, 20 July 2006 17:53 (nineteen years ago)

Anybody know the pricing/availablity of "beefalo"/bison meat? Do any of the chain retailers(incl. WinCo, CostCo) carry it?

then again, i don't eat shit for beef during the year, aside from the occasional Burgerville, which pulls only from PacNW farmers, apparently.

― kingfish cyclopean ice cream (kingfish 2.0), Thursday, 20 July 2006 19:03 (nineteen years ago)

You can get buffalo quite easily nowadays. I get mine at a farmer's market but you can get it at Trader Joe's for certain.

There's not really good regulations in the whole organic labelling thing, so if you are getting organic beef for that kind of price at a CostCo I might be a little worried I was getting shafted on the actual levels of organicness and nice conditions for those animals...

― Allyzay will never stop making pancakes (allyzay), Thursday, 20 July 2006 19:09 (nineteen years ago)

The steaks are from Sommers Organic (only new york strips - the actual SO people make a whole line of good-looking stuff that CostCo doesn't carry - organic prime rib!) and seem to be on the up and up.

― milo z (mlp), Thursday, 20 July 2006 19:36 (nineteen years ago)

yeah organic labelling standards are currently for shit. Best to investigate an individual brand you can trust and stick with them.

― Shakey Mo Collier (Shakey Mo Collier), Thursday, 20 July 2006 19:36 (nineteen years ago)

― milo z (mlp), Thursday, 20 July 2006 19:49 (nineteen years ago)

Sorry milo, I had to run off to a meeting - while it's true that organic herds are generally handled separately at a slaughterhouse, they are not required to be. A facility does not have to wash down between herds - hell, they don't have to wash down at all during a shift if they keep the temp low enough in the facility (and most do). There are also loopholes that both the USDA and FDA have left in the organic regulations, as others point out. Such as - a calf can be considered organic even if the mother was fed conventionally for all but the final third of gestation. And, calves can still be considered organic if fed non-organic milk replacer (made from cattle blood and fat) - this is allowed in "emergencies", but what kind of emergency is not specified and the information does not have to be reported.

It just worries me that people will assume all's well if they buy organic. It's just not the case. Your risk is lowest if you only eat beef from a closed herd that was grass-fed, grass-finished, field slaughtered, and processed by a small, meticulous butcher. But there's still a risk - deer and elk are affected by a TSE known as Chronic wasting disease. It's unknown at this time if it is transmissible cross-species, but the possibility is there. Affected deer may share the pasture with that grass-fed cow.

― Jaq (Jaq), Thursday, 20 July 2006 20:02 (nineteen years ago)

btw, organic only refers to how the animal was fed, not how it was treated. For that, you want to look for Certified Humane Care and Handling.

― Jaq (Jaq), Thursday, 20 July 2006 20:06 (nineteen years ago)

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