The Linear Canvas

Recently there have been many reports about mad cow disease in the news. Those stories concerned cattle owned and slaughtered in the Pacific Northwest. These cows were obviously brought here from Canada, where they had found other infected cattle last year. But because of the close ties the Canadians have with Great Britain, there is no doubt that the incidence of mad cow disease is related to either the actual importation of cattle to Canada from Britain or the feed that was ingested by the cattle. Britain, our Iraq conflict ally, is the world’s largest producer of mad cow disease and has many more cases of the disease every year than the whole world combined.

I think that most people are unaware that cattle are sometimes fed other cattle that is ground up in their food. The problem, other than cannibalism, is that the livestock companies are so concerned about costs, that they use all parts of the animal in the feed. There have been studies done in other countries concerning cannibalism. Those studies revealed that those people or animals that ingested the brain or other parts of the spinal cord, especially within their species, commonly were stricken by different forms of mad cow disease. It has been widely known for some time that this is the result of that practice. Large livestock companies try to be as efficient with reusing all parts of the cattle. It probably saves them a lot of money, but obviously this is not a safe practice. These companies have been aware of this and have little excuse for continuing this practice.

Much has been made of downed cows being reused or consumed. There is no way of knowing if any cow is affected by mad cow disease just by them being considered downed. There is a good chance that that is true though. Testing each animal could determine whether that cow is infected. Large beef producers are reluctant to spend any money beyond what they already do to ensure that the food supply is safe. If all they do is test the downed animal before processing it, I don’t know if that would appreciably affect whether someone contracts mad cow disease or not, but that would be a start.

The only way to protect consumers from mad cow disease is to at least require that no animal is fed any brain or spinal tissue, especially within their own species. I would think that would be very hard to do if you feed beef to cattle. Tissue attached to the brain and spinal cord could also be affected. What personally disgusts me, is to find out is that these large cattle companies have been feeding cows to other cows, at all. They also feed calves blood, instead of their mother’s milk. I think that all beef that is manufactured in such a way should be labeled clearly for the consumer to make a choice whether they condone cannibalism or not.

It is cattle cannibalism that is the problem here and there is only one way to stop it. But will the mad cows that run the beef companies agree to stop cattle cannibalism? I doubt it as long as the government uses the hands off of big business’ ethics, as long as they contribute to their political campaign, approach to big business that is popular in Washington these days.