Mad Cow Disease Coverup

A young mother lies six feet underground, leaving her mother to care for her ailing baby. She died from nvCJD, the human form of Mad Cow Disease. Meanwhile, her baby girl was suffering from brain damage, poor eyesight, difficulty swallowing, and stiff limbs. She slept most of the time, was not growing properly, and began having convulsions. The child's caretaker, her grandmother, who was forced to witness the untimely death of her daughter, was now reliving the trauma with her granddaughter. The baby that had not even consumed one mouthful of solid food was thought to have contracted nvCJD from her mother during pregnancy. The news of this case hit the public like a bucket of cold water. Mad Cow Disease in humans has become one of the most enigmatic health concerns of today. Governments and meat industries have been claiming that Mad Cow Disease has been contained and that there is no need to worry, yet news of this troublesome condition and its effects on humans has been slowly leaked to the public. What is really going on?

Turning a Herbivore into a Carnivore

We have all see images of Mad Cow Disease - the sick, jerking, stumbling cows in England that have caused a worldwide ban on most bovine products from the UK and other infected European countries. While we know of Mad Cow Disease, only a few of us understand the causes and implications this devastating disease has on both animals and human beings.

Current theory tells us that Mad Cow Disease began as "Mad Sheep Disease", or scrapie. Scrapie is a well-known disease found in sheep that is extremely infectious. The disease is thought to have jumped the species barrier when animal products were introduced into animal feed. Animal protein, blood, and bones were introduced into the diet of plant-eating animals to help increase weight and milk production and as a less expensive alternative to the higher-priced vegetarian feeds. These animal byproducts were made available by the rendering process (please refer to issue 2.9 for more information) of dead and sick animals, spare parts and euthanised pets. These rendered byproducts included sick sheep, some of which were ridden with scrapie, and sick cows, which were ridden with neurological problems.

Included in this soup of sloth were the brains, blood, bones, fat, skin, and internal organs of diseased animals that were ultimately cooked, dried, and introduced into the food chain as animal food. Although the soup was cooked and dried, the infectious agents, prions, were not destroyed.

Prions

A prion is a protein with no nucleic acids - meaning they cannot reproduce. It is a protein with an altered shape or abnormality and is said to be able to bind to other proteins and induce an altered shape or abnormality. This sets off a domino effect, increasing the number of abnormal proteins exponentially.

Prions cannot be destroyed by cooking, canning, freezing, digestion, sterilization, radiation or with formaldehyde. They are considered one of the smallest and most lethal self-perpetuating entities in the world, and can remain infectious for many years in soil, water, and organisms.

Although the prion theory is not unanimously accepted, attention to prion research has intensified. A nobel prize was granted to Stanley B. Prusiner from the University of California for his work on prions in 1997. Because of the nature of prions and their seemingly indestructible structure, the concept of an infectious protein has disrupted modern "knowledge" of biology and disease.

Mad Cow Disease Basics

BSE (bovine spongiform en-cephalophy), or Mad Cow Disease, is a chronic wasting disease with many disturbing symptoms. Cows display a change in temperament, panic, muscle wasting, shaking, grinding teeth, an odd moo, nervousness, aggression, abnormal posture, difficulty standing, reduced milk production, weight loss, high stepping, itching, stilted gait, itching, and excessive licking. BSE elicits no immune response and is very resistant to treatments (scrapie, the sheep equivalent to Mad Cow, survives temperatures of 360C!). The disease course ranges from less than two weeks to fourteen months.

The UK has been hit the hardest with BSE, and by 1994 over 150,000 animals were killed in over half of all UK herds. Images of shaking, stumbling cows flooded the media, and worldwide public confidence in the food supply was considerably shaken.

Meanwhile, sick cows and cow parts were continuously being recycled into the food chain through rendering and were being fed to cows, chicken, pigs, and other livestock. Cows and cow products were being exported worldwide, and in 1989 almost 800 million pounds of processed (rendered) animals were fed to beef and dairy cattle. By April of 1995, BSE was confirmed in over half of UK dairy herds and in 33.8% of all herds with adult breeding cattle.
As the public began to panic, the UK banned the practice of feeding cows, sheep and deer to other herbivore animals, hoping to put an end to the crisis. While governments assured the public that the problem had been solved, BSE statistics continued to rise. More than 17,000 cases of BSE were reported after the feed ban. Five hundred of these cases were known to have passed to calves mothers that later developed BSE (suggesting that the disease could be transferred through blood or milk). An estimated 903,000 cows were infected with BSE between 1974 - 1995.

BSE in other animals?

BSE has been found in other animals, and although the industries are very hesitant to admit this fact, the risk of a disastrous health crisis continues to grow. While BSE itself is a relatively newly diagnosed condition, the disease has been present in other animals for decades.

Sheep - Scrapie (the sheep form of mad cow) has been recognized for decades. Originally thought of as a genetic disease, it was shown to be infectious in the 1930's and has been a threat to herds until today. There are many strains of scrapie, and there have been major outbreaks in many countries, including the United States. The financial losses are major when a herd is found to be infected with scrapie, and many cases are hidden or not reported for fear of financial loss.

Mink - TME, or "Mad Mink Disease", was discovered on six Wisconsin (the cheese state!) mink farms in 1961 and on two more Wisconsin farms in 1963. Interestingly, the 1963 mink outbreak was linked to the feed given to the animals, which consisted of "downer" cows. Later, in 1985, another mink farm in Wisconsin was wiped out by TME. The diet of these animals was 95% rendered downer cows. It was later that same year that BSE was first documented in England.

Deer/Elk - Chronic Wasting Disease has been prevelant in wild deer and elk, and some US hunters are being warned of the possibility of "Mad Deer Disease".

Cats - FSE (feline spongiform encephalitis) has been found in both pet cats and zoo cats. Commercial cat food contains rendered animal protein, and zoo animals are sometimes fed down cows/animals.
Pigs - Once thought of to be safe from TSE, a study in England has shown that one out of ten pigs injected with BSE came down with a similar "Mad Pig Disease".

Other Animals - Mad Cow Disease has been shown to positively infect cats, antelopes, ostriches, mice, rats, monkeys, pigs, chimps, and other animals. Studies have also shown that TSE from one species can be carried by another species without making the carrier sick.

Mad Cows in America?

The FDA insists that Mad Cow Disease is not a threat in the United States and that no cases have been documented. As a "precaution", the FDA banned rudiment to rudiment feeding in 1997 (with the exception of milk, blood, and gelatin). Rudiments (cows, sheep, goats) can, however, still eat pork, horse, chicken, and other animals, as well as rudiment blood, gelatin and milk. Pet food and other livestock feed are not restricted. While these "precautionary" measures - although insufficient and very late - are a step in the right direction, the FDA has designated only seventeen full-time inspectors to govern over 14,000 facilities!

The reality of the FDA's regulation is that it is a textbook case of "too little, too late", as blood and milk products are still permitted in rudiment feed. As baby calves seem to contract BSE from a mother infected with the disease, it does not take a scientist to realize that blood and milk are also dangerous materials.

Is there Mad Cow disease in the United States? Most of us remember the Oprah Winfrey lawsuit after her show about mad cow disease. Texas Cattlemen sued the talkshow host for criticizing beef without "sound scientific basis". Oprah was acquitted, and one witness for the prosecution was forced to admit that there is no proof that Mad Cow Disease does NOT exist in the U.S. And there is still no proof, although the government and beef industries wish us to believe otherwise. In fact, there have been startling developments that support the fear that BSE is indeed a problem in the U.S.

Richard Marsh of the University of Wisconsin transmitted mink TSE (the mink version of mad cow disease) into healthy bulls. The results are alarming: although the bulls did not display a behavioral change, they quickly become "downer cows" - alert but unable to rise. So, what does it all mean? Because there are many strains of TSE's, Marsh's experiment forces us to realize that the "down cows" that are so prevalent in the United States may possibly have a form of Mad Cow Disease that is different from England's strain, but that could be just as deadly.

Mink encephalophy is reported to have first occurred over 45 years ago. US dairy farmers have been feeding their cows supplements containing fat, bone and meat meal for over fifty years. Downer cows have re-entered the food chain through rendering since the first case of the condition was discovered.

In 1979, the US Department of Agriculture in Mission, Texas, inoculated ten cows with scrapie (the sheep form of mad cow disease, which is thought to have crossed the species barrier). All ten cows got "downer cow syndrome". The experiment was repeated in Ames, Iowa, with the same results.

Through it all, the FDA wants us to believe that BSE has not affected our cattle. Can we believe them?

The politics of beef

We all know that when news of mad cow disease hit the streets of Europe, people became more aware of what they were putting on their dinner tables. In fact, hospitals, nursing homes and schools in the UK stopped serving beef of any kind, and at one time, 25% of England's population refused to eat cow products! When BSE was found in Germany, there was a whopping 90% decline in beef sales after a sausage recall! A huge boycott of UK beef was initiated after British Secretary of Health finally admitted that BSE was a species jumper and that humans exposed to the disease could contract it.

The severe decline in domestic beef sales accompanied by a worldwide ban on British beef blindsighted England's beef industry, and prices fell to their lowest level in over twenty years. Meanwhile, while England had ten million cows, the United States had over 100 million! The U.S. milk and meat industry is a huge business, pulling in over sixty billion dollars each year! The meat and milk industries would lose billions of dollars if public confidence was lost in the food supply. Simply put, if the US officials were to admit that there was even a possibility of a strain of mad cow disease infecting our livestock, these industries would take a deadly blow. Our officials, of course, will not risk these financial and political losses merely for the health and well being of the citizens they are in office to serve. The U.S. has the highest per capita beef consumption in the world, and our officials will not dare threaten this moneymaking industry.

Human Mad Cow - CJD

It is (under)estimated that people have eaten more than 700,000 cattle that were infected with BSE since the 1980's, and if the "downer cow syndrome" is indeed a strain of BSE like the evidence suggests, this number will skyrocket. Because it is a species jumper and has been able to infect only cattle but many other animals, it is not a stretch of the imagination to count human beings in the long list of victims. The human form of Mad Cow Disease, nvCJD, has been categorized with such illnesses as AIDS in the severity, lack of knowledge of the illness, and in the inability to cure the condition.

CJD was first described in the 1920's, and sporadic or spontaneous CJD occurs at a rate of about one in every million individuals. CJD, or Creutzfeldt-Jacob Disease, is a fatal brain disease that causes rapid dementia and neuromuscular disturbances. It is often referred to as a spongiform encephalopathy and often produces holes in the brain tissue.

CJD is traditionally known as an older person's disease - it was never found in the young. Many CJD cases have been misdiagnosed - when pathologists do autopsies and examine the brains of alzheimers patients, up to 13% are uncovered as CJD. More recently, however, CJD has been showing up in young people. This new form of CJD is dubbed nvCJD (new variant Creutzfeldt-Jacob Disease) and has been linked with Mad Cow Disease. While sixty is the median age of onset as in sporadic CJD, the median age of onset for nvCJD is twenty-eight.

It is impossible to measure the health dangers, risks, incidence, or how many people are infected (much like in early in the AIDS crisis) because nvCJD and CJD can have a dormancy period of thirty years or more. Known victims of nvCJD include Rachel Gwilliam, 33, who acquired the disease from a growth hormone, as well as thirteen individuals who were blood donors.

In the United States, one in five people will develop de-mentia. We have watched as Alz-heimers and ot-her dementias absorb our loved ones, and we wonder how these diseases have suddenly taken over the lives of so many people. Maybe it is time that we demand account-ability from those who are sup-posed to be protecting our food supply.

The Horror of CJD

With the threat of AIDS, medical personnel will not give CPR to a victim without a face mask, and gloves are worn at all times to help prevent body fluid contact. One could not fathom a more dangerous disease - until now. Precautions for CJD (including nvCJD) exceed even those required for AIDS patients.

The list of infectious parts and fluids of a human being with CJD is emmense. Cerebrospinal fluid, the brain, spleen, liver, lymph nodes, lungs, and spinal cord are highly infectious. Additionally, the kidneys, cornea, lens, bones and blood are also very hazardous. In fact, the Red Cross will not accept blood from a person who has a family history of CJD, nor can such an individual be an organ donor!

CJD is caused by a prion (as is Mad Cow Disease), and a prion is a very stable element. This makes the threat of CJD extremely high, as the prion that causes it cannot be killed with lye, radiation, dry heat, alcohol, gluteraldehyde, or formaldehyde. In fact, multiple cases of CJD have been reported to have been caused by surgery instruments, root canals, and contaminated human matter.

CJD is a disease that little is known about, and some hospitals refuse CJD patients for fear of infection. When a CJD victim dies, the family must find an embalmer who is willing to prepare the body for burial, as many refuse to work with CJD victims. When an embalmer does work with a CJD body, he/she wears three pairs of gloves, an eye/face shield, mask, cap, jumpsuit, plastic apron, shoe covers and all other protective garb. The solid waste is burned and all fluids and organs are considered infectious material.

The risks for contracting CJD are largely unknown. Not only are the officials not admitting BSE in the USA, but the Center for Disease Control in the US does not actively monitor the disease. Autopsies are not typical in suspected cases because the risk of infection is great. Young people are dying from this new variation of CJD, and eating tainted meat is not the only cause. It has been passed from mother to child and has been acquired from hormone therapy, grafts, and other iatrogenic (consequence of a medical procedure) tran-smissions.

We must keep a close watch on what our officials are doing and not doing concerning the safety of our food supply. As new diseases and genetically modified foodstuffs are rapidly finding their way into our food supply and loved ones, it is clear that we cannot rely on our officials to ensure that our diets are safe. We must take a stand and demand the truth, and we must educate ourselves about the issues that we face today. If we continue on our path of apathy, we will surely kill ourselves, our children, and our planet.