USDA: Cattle Brains May Be Turned Into Biofuels

Science - Reuters
USDA: Cattle Brains May Be Turned Into Biofuels

Mon May 17, 5:36 PM ET

By Richard Cowan

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Cattle brains and other remains that may carry the deadly mad cow disease would be turned into biofuels under a plan announced on Monday by the U.S. Department of Agriculture .

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Under the new USDA program, a $50 million loan guarantee program would be set up to help small businesses in rural areas develop ways to turn cattle brains and other high-risk parts into a "bio-based source of energy."

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=585&e=2&u=/nm/20040517/sc_nm/madcow_waste_dc


So many possibilities: Put a cow in your tank! The People MOOver. The Kow Konverter. (WTF kinda koolaid they have over there at USDA anyway?)

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Didn't see this mentioned in the article, but I was under the impression that burning prions didn't damage them. Has there been any new study that shows this isn't the case? I mean, getting them out of the food supply would be good, of course, but if burning them doesn't destroy them, wouldn't this just release them out into the air or something? Even if not that, where do they go if burning them doesn't do away with them and you're using them as a biofuel? I remember reading there were concerns about incinerating afflicted animals because they didn't know if high heat destroyed prions -- am I behind the curve now?

Of heat and pressure significantly decreases the infectivity of the prions: http://www.scienceblog.com/community/article1606.html

That combination would likely be found in an internal combustion engine. Still, I wouldn't want to find out since Dimbo has a way of injecting opinionated politics into scientific research.

Scientists have been looking for strategies to inactivate any possible infectivity in meats, and although processes such as autoclaving and exposure to strong alkali or bleach are known to kill prions, they cannot be used successfully in food preparation.

Does that mean those kids at Food Lion who were bleaching the meat to cover up for the fact it had 'gone off' were actually doing their customers a service?

Thanks for the article -- I hadn't seen any more on it. There was a DUer who used to post information about Mad Cow/CJD, but I haven't seen his ID for a while (whether he left DU or just doesn't post in the forums I read, I don't know). It's good to know there's something they can do about the prions -- I don't mind admitting the whole idea of something like that gave me the creeps. Not because I don't know much about science, but because I know just enough about it to understand what a mess something like that could make.

Inactivation of prions. Prions are characterized by extreme resistance to conventional inactivation procedures including irradiation, boiling, dry heat, and chemicals (formalin, betapropiolactone, alcohols). While prion infectivity in purified samples is diminished by prolonged digestion with proteases,(39)(40)results from boiling in sodium dodecyl sulfate and urea are variable. Sterilization of rodent brain extracts with high titers of prions requires autoclaving at 132C for 4.5 hours (h). Denaturing organic solvents such as phenol or chaotropic reagents such as guanidine isothiocyanate or alkali such as NaOH can also be used for sterilization.(41)(42)(43)(44)(45) Prions are inactivated by 1N NaOH, 4.0 M guanidinium hydrochloride or isocyanate, sodium hypochlorite (2% free chlorine concentration), and steam autoclaving at 132C for 4.5 h


http://www.cdc.gov/od/ohs/biosfty/bmbl4/bmbl4s7d.htm

Cooking it to 180 degrees might not, but burning it at 400 degrees or more certainly does.

is not a virus, even, it is a protein. Again, traces, enough to infect, were found in the ashes of nerve tissue that had been burned.

If you take any hydrocarbon, and heat it to the point where it burns, you are chemically taking apart the hydrocarbon and turning it into water, carbon dioxide/monoxide, and various other byproducts. If you are saying that some of the prions aren't actually burned, ok, that's possible. But if you are saying burned prions retain their ability to infect, then that's like saying a burned piece of paper is the same as any other piece of paper.

denatures it, they say.

The burning you're talking about was almost definitely not complete burning, and that wouldn't be the case in a car engine.

"your honor, my car caught mad cow disease"

conversion process is, rather, it is like a large "still". Read this article, it explains the process, which breaks molecular chains, which may kill the protein.

"Appel claims his Philadelphia plant can make oil from trash, animal parts and almost any kind of junk"

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/08/19/eveningnews/main569133.shtml

Check it out, it's already up and running at a Butterball plant:

"Working with turkey offal as the feedstock, the process proved to have yield efficiencies of approximately 85%; in other words, the energy required to process materials could be supplied by using 15% of the petroleum output. Alternately, one could consider the energy efficiency of the process to be 560% (85 units of energy produced for 15 units of energy consumed). Higher efficiencies may be possible with drier and more carbon-rich feedstocks, such as waste plastic. "

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_depolymerization

Once we get rid of the middle-east mad Bush oilmen, this technology is poised to take off. Every town and city with a full, unsightly, leaking, nasty landfill is going to be sitting on OIL.

drive fuel-efficient cars and leave the cows alone.

Brrrrrrrrrrrraaaaaaaaaaiinnnnnnnnnnsssssssssss........

for vegetarians!

In general, I think this is a good idea. We produce so much garbage in this country and consume so much fuel. What a nice trick it would be if we could turn the garbage into fuel.

http://www.changingworldtech.com/home.html

I wonder if heat and pressure will kill prions?

and for a little livestock story

MAN SKINNED ALIVE AT SLAUGHTERHOUSE

Av Øyvind Ludt og Carin Pettersson 29.01.04 10:28


A 27-year-old custodian was sucked into a large machine used to skin animals at a Danish slaughterhouse.

The 27-year-old was cleaning the machines at the Danish Crown Slaughterhouse in Sæby when he was caught by one of the rollers and mowed into the so-called deskinning machine. According to the paper Extra Bladet, he was pulled through the massive machines a couple of times before a colleague heard the noise and managed to turn off the machines.

He was serious injured, and he was immediately taken to the hospital in Aalborg.

“It’s not life threatening, but he has been seriously injured,” said Otto Jystrup at the Directorate of Labor Inspection in Aalborg. “There are a lot to patch together.”

“The machine resembles a carwash, where brushes moves back and forth over the surface while rotating, but there the brushes consists of small metal plates which scrape off the bristle of the pigs,” Jystrup said.

The 27-year-old, who is of Afghani descent, has an open cranium fracture, pelvis fracture, and several bone fractures, in addition to many large wounds.

Its some Swedish thing or sumpim. They actually taste pretty good.

not me luv

Anything to get a better image of mad cow syndrome--
maybe mad cow disease is actually a blessing in disguise since it may lead to new sources of energy.

WTF?

Believe that and you'd probably even believe that Iraq was behind 911--
oops, wait..., 50% of the American people believe that already--
oh well,
maybe it is a good idea
dohhh---

So let me get this straight: The USDA and the * administration won't allow wide-scale testing for mad cow because they claim there is no mad cow problem in the USA. However, they will give away $50 million to develop a sick frakenstienian method of turning brains into fuel.

WHAT THE F*CK?!?!?

Is this a bad 50's sci-fi movie? Did we skip the "Soylent Green" step of eating people, and go straight to "brains for fuel?"

:puke: :puke: :puke: :puke: :puke:
:puke: :puke: :puke: :puke: :puke:
:puke: :puke: :puke: :puke: :puke:

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Read about the Right-Wing "Master Plan": http://www.zmag.org/chomsky/sam/sam-contents.html

Have you read "War is a Racket"?: http://lexrex.com/enlightened/articles/warisaracket.htm

And french fry grease; basically anything can be turned into gasoline. The nazis turned coal into gasoline. Certain garbage.

Its a really good idea.