Greens Charge Government Cover-Up of Mad Cow Crisis

Source: Green Party USA
Posted: December 30, 2021

The U.S. government has covered up the extent and causes of mad cow disease and, as a result, the food supply and the health of the American people have been placed in grave danger, the Greens/Green Party USA charges, in a statement released today by the Party's Clearinghouse in Chicago.

The U.S. government has refused to heed the warnings of leading environmental and health activists, and has long been in violation of World Health Organization standards of beef production. "The rest of the world knows this, which is why 29 countries have cancelled importation of U.S. beef, some of them long before this latest incident, and why Europeans would rather pay hefty trade fines than allow U.S. beef to be imported," said Nancy Oden, an organic farmer from Maine and a member of the Green Party USA's National Committee.

The Green Party USA charges that government agencies have been working foot-in-mouth with the beef and pharmaceutical industries, and have lied to the American people about the extent of the threat to human beings from eating contaminated beef.

According to Mitchel Cohen, editor of the Green Party USA's national newspaper, Green Politix, "At the behest of giant pharmaceutical corporations, the government looks the other way as the cattle industry feeds animals so-called 'rendered protein' -- feed made by grinding up hundreds of thousands of dead and often diseased cows, sheep and other animals, their offal, and their blood.

"Animals raised in this way as units of industrial production rather than as sentient beings," Cohen continued, "are also exposed to high levels of herbicides and pesticides, and are regularly injected with untested and genetically engineered growth stimulants, antibiotics, and other chemicals that wreck the animals' existing lives and remain in their carcasses when they're butchered and sold as meat. The possibility of contracting Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (CJD), the human variant of Mad Cow, as well as other serious diseases, is very real. But the government is more interested in persuading the public to continue its mass consumption of meat than in protecting them -- or the animals," Cohen charged.

Cohen noted that independent researchers in England have found a high correlation between the incidence of Mad Cow Disease and exposure to organophosphate pesticides such Malathion and Phosmet, as well as Thalidomide. Farmers were instructed to pour the pesticides directly over the spines of cows to kill the warble fly larvae; the chemicals may also be "recycled" back to previously healthy cattle via the intensive feeding of meat and bone meal. As was the case when independent researchers first made the link between CJD and mad cow, this information is being suppressed at the behest of the pharmaceutical industry.

After an epidemic of Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease deaths in Britain in 1996, the World Health Organization introduced guidelines to reduce the likelihood of Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE -- the formal name for Mad Cow Disease) -- in which cattle developed millions of microscopic holes in their brains, suffered seizures, fell down and died miserable deaths -- from jumping species from cows to humans. But instead of following those recommendations -- limited as they were in that they did not address the pesticide connection to BSE at all -- the beef industry, with the support of the U.S. government, set up a public relations campaign to keep U.S. consumers in the dark.

The Green Party cites three main myths of the industry:

The first myth: U.S. beef is safe because brain and spinal cord tissue (which are said to harbor mad cow) are removed before processing.

The claim is odd to anyone who has ever seen a T-bone steak, which includes a section of the spinal cord that can easily contaminate meat during butchering. U.S. Department of Agriculture reports reveal that as much as 35% ofbeef, hot dogs and sausage samples taken from advanced meat and bone separation machinery are contaminated with ''unacceptable nervous tissues'' that may harbor the contaminants that cause Mad Cow Disease. In addition, concussions created in animals by the use of stunning devices currently used to kill them can force brain tissue into the bloodstream. These practices have been eliminated in the European Union, but continue in the United States.

The second myth: U.S. beef is safe because 20,000 cattle are inspected each year.

The problem is that this represents only a tiny portion of the 100,000 to 1,000,000 annual "downer" cattle. Too sick to stand up, such a cow is "down." Yet, under the Clinton/Gore administration and continued under Bush/Cheney, meat inspectors across the country have been laid off. In Europe, just the opposite has occurred; there, cattle are tested for BSE at a rate nearly 2,000 times greater than in the U.S.

The third myth: U.S. beef is safe because the U.S. halted feeding rendered meat to cows.

Actually, the Clinton/Gore administration allowed Congressional negotiating committees from industrial cattle-raising areas to overturn attempts to ban the rendering of all animal parts into feed. It is consequently still legal to manufacture animal feed from ground-up cattle, potentially contaminated deer and elk, and feed it to pigs and chickens; the industry then grinds up these animals, along with "chicken litter," blood, and offal, and feeds the mixture to cattle.

According to St. Louis Green Party organizer Don Fitz, the U.S. cattle industry would prefer that these secrets not reach the light of day lest consumers, in disgust, refuse to purchase beef. "The most shocking practice," Fitz reports, "is that the industry suckles calves with blood rather than milk. Many dairies separate calves from their mothers and wean them on the brownish 'milk replacer' made from cattle blood protein. At least 15 published studies show mad cow disease can be transmitted through blood."

As a consequence the human variant of mad cow disease is likely far greater than the 130-155 cases reported in England in 1996. There are currently more than 250 cases of Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease in the U.S. It is also likely that many Alzheimers patients have been misdiagnosed, due to that disease's similarity to CJD.

The danger of mad cow to the nation's 96 million cattle and Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease to humans has increased dramatically under Democratic as well as Republican administrations, which have refused to take the measures necessary to protect the American food supply. The Green Party joins with just about everyone in calling for an increase in the number of USDA inspectors, but that is not enough.

The Greens/Green Party USA calls on the U.S. government to enact a total ban on:

- thalidomide, and applications of organophosphate pesticides such as Malathion and Phosmet;

- synthetic/genetically engineered hormones in animals, and genetically engineered crops;

- the manufacture of animal feed from ALL animal parts, including blood, offal, and animal-based protein substitutes;

- the unhealthy and disease-inducing confinement of animals in industrial-scale production; and,

- the generalized use of antibiotics in animals.

The fact is, the U.S. government has failed take the decisive steps necessary to protect the food supply in the United States, a direct result of both the Democratic as well as the Republican Party's protection of the immediate profits of industries that finance their elections, at the expense of the longer-term interests of farmers and of the health and safety of the American people in general, animals, and the preservation of the natural environment.

CONTACT: Don Fitz / Nancy Oden / Mitchel Cohen (718) 670-3231

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INFORMATION ON MAD COW DISEASE

The recent news of mad cow disease in the US highlights how harmful factory
farms our to our health. Because both information and misinformation is
spreading throughout the media, we encourage you to visit the GRACE Factory
Farm Project's page on Mad Cow at
http://www.factoryfarm.org/topics/health/madcow/. The section lists current
news articles and links to reputable organizations who are presenting
information about Mad Cow.

Friends of the Earth has released an excellent fact sheet called "Mad Cow
Disease: Are Americans at Risk?" at
http://www.foe.org/factoryfarms/madcowfactsheet.pdf.

AVOID EXPOSURE TO MAD COW DISEASE

The best way to avoid exposure to Mad Cow Disease is to know where your
meat is raised. Buy meat from local, independent family farmers who use
sustainable or organic methods.

If you would like an introduction to sustainable food issues, visit
Sustainable Table at http://www.sustainabletable.org/.

If you would like to find a local producer in your area, visit the Eat Well
Guide at http://www.eatwellguide.org/. We continue to update and improve
the guide daily - in the next few months, the directory will undergo a major
facelift, to help make it even easier for consumers to find sustainably
raised meat in their area.

To learn more about all the issues surrounding factory farming and
sustainable agriculture, please visit the GRACE Factory Farm Project's web
site at http://www.factoryfarm.org/.

To get an overview of the issues surrounding factory farming and
sustainable agriculture, visit GRACE's Sustainable Table campaign at
http://www.sustainabletable.org/.

If you would like to get more involved with factory farming issues, please
contact us to register as a volunteer, or visit Sustainable Table's "Get
Involved" section at http://www.sustainabletable.org/getinvolved/ for simple
actions you can take to help promote sustainable food.