Eat meat, then. BUT, know what you're getting - pay a little more and buy organic - vegetarian-fed beef...because:
In this country, the government agency with primary
responsibility for preventing an outbreak of mad cow disease or
its human variant, nvCJD, is the U.S. Food and Drug
Administration (FDA).
The FDA in 1997 issued a rule declaring it illegal for farmers to
feed animal protein from ruminants or mink to other ruminants --a
preventive step that had been taken by the British government in
1988. Ruminants are animals that chew their cuds, including
cattle, sheep, goats, deer and elk. Mink are included in the
FDA's ban because they can get a TSE similar to mad cow disease.
When cows, pigs, and chickens are slaughtered, much of the animal
cannot be used for food and is sent to a rendering plant to be
ground up, boiled down, dried to the consistency of brown sugar
and sold as feed for cows, pigs, chickens, and pets. It is this
rendered "animal protein" derived from ruminants (and mink) that
FDA has banned from feeding to ruminants.
The FDA's ruminant-to-ruminant ban still allows animal protein of
all kinds to be fed to pigs and chickens, and it allows animal
protein derived from pigs and chickens to be fed to ruminants.
The FDA ban also allows blood and gelatin derived from ruminants
to be fed to other ruminants. In the U.S., many newborn calves
are fed a high-protein diet consisting mainly of dried blood
Blood cells carry prions just as nerve cells do.[4].
A small group of scientists, led by Dr. Michael Hansen of
Consumers Union, has challenged the adequacy of FDA's
ruminant-to-ruminant rule.[5] They argue that the FDA ban does
not go far enough, "does not adequately protect human health, and
is not scientifically defensible."[6] Consumers Union is the
publisher of CONSUMER REPORTS magazine. |
