Mad Cow!
Lolly was a vegetarian...I am an omnivore, and I try not to give all that much thought to the bigger questions of what I am eating.
Now I am reading more about this Mad cow disease - BSE -bovine spongiform encephalopathy, and the fact that it is many diseases at once....CJD-
Cruetzfeld Jacob disease -- and CWD - chronic wasting disease -- and scabie, the same thing in ovine as bovine...hmmmm....20:20 hindsight!
I am thinking more about this .... More about prions - more about cannalistic feeding -- more about
the FDA covering up this whole story....Whew!

Now please, you must immediately go to look at this Flash movie: The Meatrix

From Boingboing.net: This website is by a man who claims to have slaughtered the mad cow. He says the cow was not a downer as claimed by the USDA.

WE WERE ONLY TESTING DOWNERS FOR BSE. NO MORE DOWNERS MEANS NO MORE BSE TESTING. PERIOD. We tested that big white walker because she was mixed in with the downers. Mad cows are not downers they are up and they are crazy. The USDA started testing downers because they didn't think they would find any BSE cows in that mess. They could then say to the consumer we've been testing and we haven't found anything. EAT YOUR MEAT. BUY BEEF. IT'S SAFELink

They are not testing the cows, because it would blow the lid off this story--

From Newswise_
Krull, a strong advocate for mad cow disease testing of all slaughtered cows intended for market, suggests the U.S. follow the lead of countries such as England and Japan. England, in response to their mad cow disease epidemic in the 1980s and 1990s, instates mandatory testing of all slaughtered cows intended for market, keep detailed records of all cows within their borders, and banned the use of all ruminant feed. Currently the U.S. and Canada lag on all accounts, says Krull.

“It’s disturbing that, even with a confirmed case of mad cow disease, slaughtered cows are not tested before they are sent to market,” said Krull. The United States Department of Agriculture tests approximately .03 percent of U.S. slaughtered cattle for mad cow disease in their random spot tests.

Testing of all cattle as part of the USDA’s regular procedure, according to Krull, the cost of adding such testing is minimal, between $20 to $25 per cow, which translates into about six cents per pound of beef. Krull says the issue of testing for mad cow disease is highly political. The more cattle tested, the more likely it is that some will be found with mad cow disease. “They don’t want to find it,” says Krull. “The USDA really should be funding this like crazy, but they're not.”

This is Your Brain on Beef
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Madcow.org brings us the Thomas Pringle interview which will make you think twice or three times! about eating beef--by which I refer to factory-farm supermarket beef, part of an industry that hasused cannabilistic practices to feed calves blood and by-products, which is so disgusting.

And of course no one wants to know about this. Least of all me.

From Dr. Pringle's interview:

Brandan Kearney: I mentioned something about mad cow disease to a friend, and she said "Isn't that just some sort of conspiracy theory?" I also know people who refuse to visit your site because they don't want to be upset. One might argue that the United States doesn't need to censor information, because we're prone not to believe things when we hear them, or we choose to tune them out entirely.

Dr. Thomas Pringle: Good observation. This is the golden age of denial and avoidance... something like twenty percent of adults are on Prozac, and a lot of the others wallow in TV.

Brandan Kearney: Still, you mentioned that the site got seventeen-thousand hits one week; obviously people are using it to educate themselves. Could you discuss the beneficial effects of your site - the most gratifying, concrete results you've seen?

Dr. Thomas Pringle: The way it works is indirect and ungratifying. While there have been two-hundred-thousand visits from .gov from fifty-seven countries (they need to stay informed), only a handful provide direct links to us from their own TSE pages. It is a control-of-information issue for them; governments are used to controlling and spinning information. The press goes along with this to an alarming degree. Thus the Web threw their system into chaos. People who actually knew something now owned a printing press and had free perpetual distribution.

This disease is an inherently difficult topic. All power ultimately arises from content. Governments can be driven into information oblivion. Content rules.

However, governments are very reluctant to acknowledge an information alternative to themselves, because this cedes power. And so while I was quoted in two London papers and the New York Times yesterday on different subjects, only the Times identified me. And when a long-advocated, no-brainer policy comes about, such as today's end of cannibalistic feeding in the UK, it is their own thinking.

It is all compounded in this particular disease, indeed driven, by huge economic stakes in two megabuck industries: medical (blood, surgery) and livestock. Most government agencies -- e.g., the FDA or CDC -- were captured long ago by the industries they were supposed to regulate, and were reduced to towel boys.

Scientists are very similar to government; they are not accustomed to the rapid-publication aspect of the Web. Again, it is all about control. They are up the creek.