Tue, 12 Oct 2004

US beef industry reacts to Canadian BSE scare stories

I just sit here and shake my head in wonder at these folks ...

... cattle at a number of farms were eating feed intended only for pigs and chickens. That feed may have contained the rendered remains of the diseased cow.

This is why I feed my chickens pure corn and soybean meal, with added fish meal for vitamins and proteins. Livestock of ANY sort does NOT need to be eating the remains of diseased animals! This is often how disease (and not just BSE) is transmitted! Didn't these bozo's take biology 101 in high school???

But what's really galling is that my sales are probably going to be affected as well, unless I do a massive education job for my customers. You see, because of the attitude of the "industry":

Earlier this year, a Wall Street Journal Online/Harris Interactive Health-Care Poll in the US showed that one in every five American adults - 21 per cent - said that fear of mad cow disease would change their eating habits, while 78 per cent of these people said that they would eat less beef. Some 16 per cent indicated that they would stop eating beef altogether.

Essentially, they're going to destroy their own industry rather than change their unsafe and unhealthy practices. And it'll have a big inmpact on the small, natural producers as well, as the public often cannot or will not distinguish between our products. Beef is, after all, merely a "commodity".

Bastards.

Recent North American media reports claiming that parts of the BSE-positive cow discovered in Canada in May 2003 may have been turned into feed and mistakenly fed to cattle have been pounced on by US beef industry groups.

(link) [Food Production Daily]

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