Mad Cow USA: Could the Nightmare Happen here?

Mad Cow USA: Could the Nightmare Happen Here?, John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton, Common Courage Press, 1997

        Mad Cow Disease is the informal name for a fatal cow disease called Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy, or BSE. It is transmissible to other cows through the factory farming practice of rendering, or feeding the ground up remains of dead cows, to other cows. People get the disease by eating tainted meat. BSE takes a long time to become noticeable in a cow, so by the time a cow is ready for slaughter, it could be BSE positive and no one would know it. The human version of BSE, called Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease, or CJD, kills by creating millions of tiny, spongy holes in a person's brain. It is 100% fatal.

        Stauber and Rampton have written a fascinating and very detailed book about the BSE epidemic in England, which killed about a dozen people and forced the killing of thousands and thousands of cows. They also go into detail on the history, looking at a sheep version of BSE called scrapie, and a variant of BSE called kuru, which was decimating a tribe in New Guinea until the practice of cannibalism was stopped.

        The authors also have things to say about an American meat industry seemingly more interested in public relations and suppressing critics (like the Oprah Winfrey trial in Texas) than in cutting back on, or stopping, the potentially deadly practice of grinding up dead animals and feeding them to other animals.

        To get the undiluted facts instead of diluted nonsense on this urgent issue, this is a Must Read of a book.