11 Apr 2005
Protecting sacred sheep

I find it a little hard to believe that there are only 1500 of these sheep still around as the the wool is prized by handspinners. I personally know of at least three flocks of over 100 animals, and I'm nowhere near Navajo country.

Animal geneticist Harvey D. Blackburn collects and stores thousands of samples of animal germplasm -- mainly semen and embryos -- to make sure there's enough genetic material to reintroduce a species if necessary. Much of his collection deals with important livestock such as Holstein cattle and Yorkshire pigs. But one of the collections Blackburn is working on is likely not familiar to many Americans. He is trying to collect 6,000 units of semen from Navajo-Churro sheep, a breed culturally important to the Navajo tribe of the Southwest.

(link) [Science Blog]

00:00 /Agriculture | 0 comments | permanent link

Farmers sue [Canadian] federal government over Mad Cow disease

But what are the claims made against the government?

The cattle producers claim that Agriculture Canada failed to consider safety issues when compiling a list of permitted animal feed ingredients in 1988-1990 and lost track of 80 cattle that had been imported from the United Kingdom and Ireland, allowing them to be ground up into cattle feed. As a consequence, BSE infected a number of Canadian cattle, which in turn led to devastating consequences for the Canadian cattle industry.

Ahem. If you feed ruminants the food they were designed to eat, they wouldn't get weird brain wasting diseases. Last time I checked, ruminants were vegetarians - you'll never see a cow run down a deer (or a mouse) to chow down! Doh!

As I've pointed out here so many times as to make linking to all of my rants redundant - the solution to mad cow is to stop feeding beef (or mutton, or venison, etc.) to ruminants. It's really just that simple. If you want to keep your herd free from BSE, just graze them, and don't feedlot them at all. Easy.

As long as you're not a huge corporate concern more worried about next quarter's P&L than you are about a disease that'll only show up in your consumers ten years from now...

A group of Canadian cattle farmers is launching a class action suit over Ottawa's handling of Mad Cow disease, alleging the government was negligent and incompetent in protecting the interests of the cattle industry.

(link) [Ottawa Business Journal]

00:00 /Agriculture | 0 comments | permanent link