flame bait or broiled?

I have always maintained there are a hell of a lot riskier things to do out there than eat beef. I usually use the old driving a car is way more dangerous in terms of the odds, example. I think I will start using the "you are more likely to be abducted by vegetarian aleins than you are to aquire vCJD"

from a trade e-mail newsletter (Drovers Journal):

Global BSE cases declining

Worldwide cases of bovine spongiform encephalopathy have declined about 50 percent per year over the past three years, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization. In 2005, just 474 animals died of BSE around the world, compared with 878 in 2004 and 1,646 in 2003, and against a peak of several tens of thousands in 1992, the FAO said. Deaths caused by the human form of BSE, variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, have also been dropping, the FAO said. There were five deaths in 2005, compared with nine in 2004 and 18 in 2003. All of the deaths occurred in the United Kingdom, which was hit hardest by both BSE and vCJD.

But it has to be from a good source.

along with the BSE numbers year for year. Apparently there's no time required to develop the disease in humans after being exposed to it through BSE contaminated meat.

So, there you go. All is right with the world, enjoy your steak.

Message sponsored by poor, starving beef producers world-wide, won't somebody give us a tax cut?

... is not much of a risk factor to consume, with the possible exception of T-bone. Ground beef is the danger zone.

the 10+ year lag time fits the scenario - highest rates of BSE in the UK WERE approx 20 years ago, it would be expected then for the vCJD rates to be declining now as well, although the two current numbers are not exactly related, as you point out. Theoretically (if actually eradicated) BSE should reach zero before vCJD does.

I like meat too much, and the odds of being hit by lightning always seemed better than getting the human form of the disease.

But, do whatever feels good to you.

Personally, I don't miss beef one bit (bite?).

I've been "beef-free" for almost 15 years now and it feels great!

How many cases do you think there would be? I am curious.

numbers.

Bottom line for me: I don't trust the government. I don't trust the cattle industry. I don't trust the medical establishment. I do not believe that any of those entities have our best interests at heart.

They proved that by feeding (and approving the feeding of) sick cows to other cows. Nothing will ever win my trust back after that.

still pretty darn low. Even if it was 10 or 100 times what is reported - 500 worldwide? Those are probably better odds than almost any cause of death I can think of! I don't trust these entities (even the maintsream beef orgs, even though I am a producer) either, but my lack of trust stems from incompetence, not intentional misdeeds.

The feeding of animal protein to cattle is pretty gross, but was and is a method to generate cheap food for consumers while using the waste in a "productive" manner - cattle can and do eat a lot of things humans cannot. (I have seen both cattle and deer, to mention a couple of herbivores chew and eat hides and bones of dead animals for the protien and minerals in completely "natural" settings) I am not defending the practice just explaining the reason it came about - as opposed to some intention to make humans sick.

Healthier for me, healthier for the environment. Less cows will be produced to feed me. Less cows will have to live their miserable lives and be slaughtered.

I quit eating beef because I read about "mad cow" in "In These Times" way before it hit the national media.

Since then, I've learned so many other things about the harmful effects of the cattle industry that even if the "mad cow" threat were completely eliminated (and I don't think it has) I will never go back to eating them.

and some of the studies methods and assumptions are likely suspect.

Not that I would mind being abducted by lacto-ovo-vegetarian aliens, or that I enjoy keeping a light frisson of nervousness every time I spaz and bite my own tongue while driving and drinking coffee and eating a breath mint and swearing at the radio, or can't remember where I put the car keys, but I'd rather pay more money for rigorous meat inspections now than pay with my own brain tissue later.

My concern is that our very own beef industry fox-in-the-henhouse USDA has a vested interest in reducing costs to the beef industry and that reports like this are used as justification for lax inspection policies.

:rofl: It's time to take a break.

If I go crazy for eating beef, at least it will be a good reason.

or I get the natural beef at Whole Foods or Wild Oats when it's on sale. I haven't eaten commercially-raised beef in years.

my concern. I mean, it's just food. And damnnnnnnnnn goooooood foooood at that! :)

Okay, you have listed one possible negative and generally debunked it. Here are some more negatives for your viewing and researching pleasure:

1) Roughly 10 human beings could be fed on the amount of grain used to feed one cow being raised for beef.

2) Between 2,500 and 5,000 gallons of water are conserved for every one pound of beef given up by a human consumer.

3) At a feedlot of a mere 37,000 cows (many have upwards of 100,000), 25 tons of corn are dumped every hour. It takes 1.2 gallons of oil to make the fertilizer used for each bushel of that corn. Before a cow is slaughtered, she will eat 25 pounds of corn a day; by the time she is slaughtered she will weigh more than 1,200 pounds. In her lifetime she will have consumed, in effect, 284 gallons of oil.

4) Livestock now produces 130 times the amount of waste that people do. This waste is untreated and unsanitary. It bubbles with chemicals and diseasebearing organisms. It overpowers nature’s ability to clean it up. It’s poisoning rivers, killing fish and getting into human drinking water. 65% of California’s population is threatened by pollution in drinking water just from dairy cow manure. It isn’t just cows that produce this waste. Factory-raised hogs produce four times the waste in North Carolina as the 6.5 million people of that state do. Even the oceans are polluted: 7,000 square miles of the Gulf of Mexico are a dead zone.

5) 70% of the lands in western national forests are grazed; 90% of Bureau of Land Management land is grazed. These are public lands. These lands are trampled by the cattle, compacting the soil. When it rains, the land doesn’t absorb the water. Instead, it runs off, taking away topsoil, forming deep gullies and damaging streambeds. The government protects the cattle by killing off any creature that might threaten the livestock. They poison, trap, snare, den, shoot or gun down the wildlife. Denning, by the way, is the practice by federal agents of pouring kerosene into the dens of animals and setting them on fire, burning the young animals alive in their nests. According to Robbins, agents kill badgers, black bear, bobcats, coyotes, gray fox, red fox, mountain lions, opossums, raccoons, skunks, beavers, porcupines, prairie dogs, blackbirds, cattle egrets and starlings using these methods. These activities take place on public lands, which were created in large part to protect the environment! Your tax dollars subsidize these activities.

6) We import more than 200 million pounds of beef from Central America alone. Every second of every day, one football field of tropical rainforest is destroyed in order to produce 257 hamburgers. Every time you destroy rainforest land, you destroy rich plant and animal life, varieties of life we don’t even understand, and forms of which may provide the medicines we need to cure disease. Rainforests supply us with oxygen. They moderate our climates. When rainforests are destroyed, it’s only a matter of time before the land becomes desertified. Rainforests absorb some of the carbon dioxide we are spewing into the atmosphere.

We humans have increased the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere by 25% compared with any other period when humans were on this planet. Most of that has taken place in the last 50 years. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, consisting of some of the best scientists in the world, says global warming is a fact. If uncontrolled, we will have ecosystem collapses, crop failures, weather disasters, coastal flooding, the spreading of previously controlled diseases, the death of coral reefs and new insect pests.

Carbon dioxide is largely produced by the burning of fossil fuels, especially coal, and especially our use of inefficient vehicles for transportation. But not often mentioned is the fossil fuel used to raise farm animals. When you eat beans, for example, you use 1/27 the amount of fossil fuel to produce a calorie of energy as you do when you eat beef. You get the same food energy producing only 4% of the carbon dioxide that a person eating beef does. Another fact we don’t talk about: cattle produce almost one fifth of global methane emissions. Cattle fart. Big time. Their gas is methane. Methane is actually 24 times as potent as carbon dioxide in causing climate chaos.

7) Animal extinction: we are losing several thousand species per year, and maybe tens of thousands (as opposed to the average 10-25 per year in preindustrial times). The driving force behind all these extinctions is the destruction of wildlife habitat, especially the rainforests. The driving force behind the destruction of the rainforests is livestock grazing. The leading cause of species in the United States being threatened or eliminated is livestock grazing. A 1997 study of endangered species in the southwestern United States by the Fish and Wildlife Service found that half the species studied were threatened by cattle ranching.

So, hormones and mad cow aren't everything (though these are what most people worry about). There are so many reasons to avoid eating beef, and other animal products, it would take days for me to list them all here.

(*Some stats and info from earthsave.org)

1. Grains used for livestock feed are not generally suitable for human consumption, nor are the lands that much of it is grown on suitable for growing food for humans. Having said that, pasture raised meats make the point pretty much moot anyway.

2. Again a figure based on conventional ag - although meat is a nutrient dense food, so there is some payoff for the increased water usage.

3. Agree - but again no need for feedlots. (and why the hell don't they view it as FERTILIZER rather than WASTE????)

4. see above. dung is naturally converted to grass as part of the nutrient/carbon cycle on pasture. What you list is again a problem of feedlots.

5. Proper management can actually reverse all of this and enhance soil functioning. It is all about timing. You are also making EXTREMELY broad statements about predator management that many, many ranchers do not practice or agree with. (most "public lands" especially as in the blm, were NOT created to protect environment - better do a little history search)

6. methane: can you say termites? (actually cows burp way more than they fart, if you want to be accurate about this) stats: again with the conventional feedlot paradigm.

7. The driving force behind the destruction of the rainforests (and almost all environmental destruction) is human population growth. The US imports less than 10% of it's beef supply and of that, less than 10% (or less than 1% of total beef supply in US) is from ALL of South America (some parts are VERY suitable for lifestock raising). American meat eaters are not contributing significantly to rainforest distruction.

Please cite this study concerning extiction in the US? Link? I would say that in the southwest, urban sprawl is going to wipe out more species and landscapes than anything. Ranching right along with them.