My thoughts about Mad Cow: You can eat beef safely

As you may know 'Mad Cow' is a Prion infection of the nervous system in
Mammals. It's simply a protein that has the ability to cause infected
tissue to replicate itself after a latent or dormant period of sometimes
decades. When the Prion becomes truly infectious the replication causes
holes, literally or "spongiform" in the victims brain to form. You
_cannot_ cook the meat enough to rid the product of the abnormal
protein.

The disease is transmitted by eating infected nervous tissue such as
brain, spinal cord or even bone of the sick animal. The meat industry
is to blame mostly because they

-add unusable parts of slaughtered animals to the feed. Remember Cows
are vegetarians.

-slaugher sick animals for consumption instead of discarding them
properly.

-too lax in the butchering process whereby risk of nervous system tissue
may contaminate product.

OTOH, I believe the risk in the US is slight but since the nature of the
disease is so horrific I will not eat beef from a normal farm.

The good news is you can eat beef with virtually no risk. When at the
market purchase "organic" or "free range" products. The animals are fed
only a grain diet, are much more healthy and free from antibiotics and
other nasty additives you really should not be eating. And besides free
range animals are treated in a much more *humane* fashion. That should
be reason alone, IMHO. Dairy products and other meats as well.

It is though about 20% more expensive. Normally I eat seafood, chicken
or lamb for protein but NYE I bought free range Tenderloin Tails for
10.99 lb. A bit more, but frankly when I'm thinking about those 'holes'
forming in my head (:

--
Keith


_____

"Cosmic upheaval is not so moving as a little child pondering the death
of a sparrow in the corner of a barn." -Anouk Aimee, French Actor
_____

"Death is better, a milder fate than tyranny", Aeschylus (525BC-456BC),
Agamemnon
_____

"I wear no Burka." - Mother Nature

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"Moderate Mammal" <BunnERabbit RemoveThis @webtv.net> wrote in message
news:8943-3FF6B299-2@storefull-2314.public.lawson.webtv.net...
>
> OTOH, I believe the risk in the US is slight but since the nature of the
> disease is so horrific I will not eat beef from a normal farm.

I heard someone on the radio (no, not Snoory) read excerpts from a study
published in the New England Journal of Medicine stating that a third of
autopsied alzheimer victims really had the human version of mad cow disease.
The study only involved around 60 people who were thought to have died from
alzheimer but indicates that mad cow disease may already be wide spread.