Mad Cow For Dinner?
by Brenda Shoss
To subscribe to Kinship Circle Letters for Animals, email: subscribe@kinshipcircle.orgIn 1996, Howard Lyman bad-mouthed beef on the Oprah Winfrey show. The former cattle rancher and author of Mad Cowboy: Plain Truth From The Cattle Rancher Who Won't Eat Meat, explained how dead cows, sheep, pigs and goats were routinely pulverized into feed for live animals. Cows eating cows, a sort of agricultural cannibalism, had been linked to a new strain of Cruetzfeldt-Jakob disease, the rare fatal nervous system infection in humans.
Lyman said a mad cow outbreak on U.S. turf would make AIDS seem like the common cold. His candor inspired Oprah to utter: "It has just stopped me from eating another burger!" It also inspired Engler & Cactus Feeders cattle company to sue Winfrey, Lyman and Harpo Productions for 12 million dollars each. But U.S. District Judge Mary Lou Robinson threw out the Texas cattlemen's libel angle. Today, Lyman may sport an I-told-you-so smirk. With almost 100 Europeans dead and cow chaos on the rise, the present question is not what if mad cow disease lands on U.S. shores-but how long before it does?
In 1986, the United Kingdom's first bad bovine led to the 15-year slaughter of 3.7 million cows. Currently, bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) rages across Europe with World War III ferocity. In February, the German government authorized the massacre of 400,000 cattle. The Irish plan to terminate 300,000 by June. With sick cows in France, Denmark, Poland, Spain, Austria, Belgium and Italy, the European Union intends to kill 2 million more animals.
In the meantime, British veterinarians armed with insecticides and bullets hope to avert hoof-and-mouth disease, a non-fatal, transmutable virus (with human symptoms similar to a bad cold) found in cloven-hoofed animals such as cows, pigs, goats and sheep. Though Dutch authorities intend to vaccinate herds, Britain's Ministry of Agriculture so far plans to wipe out up to half of Britain's 63 million livestock. Under international terms, countries that inoculate livestock forfeit their disease-free status and cannot export their livestock on world markets.
Amid such ominous forecasts as "food scarcity" and "catastrophic profit loss" authorities impulsively kill and reluctantly vaccinate. Yet no one has addressed the factory farm environment, a literal breeding ground for contagious infections. Every year 10 billion animals are confined without enough room to stand or move comfortably. Artificially fattened animals, filled with antibiotics, hormones and steroids, have depressed immune systems. Most are castrated, de-beaked, de-clawed, and de-tailed until too mutilated to struggle. On the killing floor, harried workers frequently fail to stun animals and often dismember and skin them alive.
Almost a decade after Britain banned ground meat and bone (MBM) as feed for cows, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration imposed a similar restriction. The 1997 USDA ruling, which let producers mix bovine proteins in poultry and pig feed, was a sketchy precaution at best. No one knows if mad cow disease can cross over from cow-to pig, sheep or chicken-and back again.
Last December, the USDA barred all European animal protein products. Thus, our fail-safe barricade against mad cow or hoof-and-mouth disease boasts an operating time of 5 months. InJanuary the FDA reported that 20% of U.S. feed plants ignore preventative guidelines and many fail to adequately label goods.
In our international economy, it is nearly impossible to track the conduits of disease. Professor Steve Best describes how an animal bred in Britain may be "fattened in France, slaughtered in Spain and eaten in Ecuador." To stem the spread of hoof-and-mouth, USDA inspectors spray British air travelers with a bleach-water brew and search their bags for contraband meat. Forget drugs. Smuggled meat now detains passengers and carries $100 (or more) in fines.
American consumers are assured that cows are safe for dinner. But what about venison or lamb? To curtail widespread panic, variations on the mad-cow theme get scant publicity. BSE falls within the disease group "transmissible spongiform encephalopathies," or TSEs. Brain-ravaging TSEs can attack sheep, deer, elk, cows, mink, cats, squirrels, monkeys, humans and other species. An affiliated TSE disease, chronic wasting disease (CWD), now afflicts 4 to 8% of deer and elk herds between Colorado and Wyoming.
In 1999, CWD emerged on a commercial elk farm near Philipsburg, Montana. Though health authorities swiftly killed 81 elk, CWD's robust disease catalyst, a prion protein, can withstand standard decontamination methods. Can CWD pass from deer and elk to humans? The species-barrier theory applied to mad cow disease in Britain proved false.
Last year, Doug McEwan of Utah displayed motor control loss, mood swings and confusion. The 28-year-old's brain biopsy verified Creutzfeld-Jakob disease. McEwan was one of 3 young hunters profiled in a Boston Globe article. A Centers for Disease Control statistician informed reporter Terry Allen that another under-30 CJD victim "might tip the balance" in America.
Last summer, an Indiana man with a taste for beef-brain sandwiches succumbed to CJD. Forensic pathologist John Hiedingsfelder told the Evansville Courier he'd observed 3 CJDcases in one year. To date, mad cow disease is not linked to the Indiana victims. The cattleman's association allegedly warned staff writer Roberta Heiman to lay off the sandwich stories.
Scrapie, the sheep variation, has shown-up in herds around the country. In March, federal agents snatched the second of two suspect dairy flocks in Vermont, prompting protesters outside one family farm to give them the Nazi salute. Though the sheep's owners cited faulty tests, U.S. officials packed 126 animals on death-trucks bound for Iowa.
Despite every knee-jerk effort, mad cow and hoof-and-mouth diseases endure. By the time this column is published, new outbreaks will headline the news. Most reports will overlook the obvious way to avoid tainted meat: the transition to a healthy, ecologically sustainable plant-based diet.
Unlike true carnivores, humans don't salivate over living animals. We purchase their cellophane-wrapped remains in the supermarket. According to cardiologist Stephen Lenhoff, the human body is designed to be vegetarian. "If you look at herbivorous animals, they have longer guts. The longer guts are to absorb nutrients. The human small intestine is 26 feet long. Carnivorous animals have short guts."
Humans clog their long and winding intestines to fulfill a conditioned craving for meat's smell, look and taste. A "beautiful cut of meat" symbolizes prosperity. Meat is the centerpiece of Sunday barbecues, family reunions, and other nurturing acts of love. Children learn to separate the flesh and bone on their plates from the gentle creatures who provided it.
But our meat-addicted society has a few glitches. Up to 1 billion people go to sleep hungry, while affluent countries feed 16 pounds of grain to cattle to produce just 1 pound of beef. Livestock eat enough grains and soybeans to feed 1.3 billion people and they guzzle 50% of the water supply. Chicken factories alone can use up to 100,000 gallons a day.
The meat industry also leaves the stench of 68,000 pounds of manure per second. A report compiled by the U.S. Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry revealed that livestock produce 130 times as much fecal matter as the entire human population.
We are a bandaid-culture, committed to quick fixes rather than long-term solutions. We can arbitrarily poison, shoot and burn millions of animals, until their carcasses litter the earth and their souls ascend in a memory of rising smoke. For what? To ensure a "few seconds of pleasure in one of the 5 nerve endings of the human tongue," writes humanitarian author Michael Tobias.
The meat-disease epidemic is merely another indicator that modern agribusiness is nonsustainable. The need to overhaul intensive confinement farming transcends animal rights, Lyman concludes. "It has to do with common sense-with making the world sustainable for yourself, your children and your grandchildren."