Mad Cow U.S.A.

Rating:
Summary: TSE dangers fairly RENDERED
Review: Like kuru, scrapie and CJD, BSE ("mad cow disease") is a Transmissible Spongiform Encephalopathy (TSE), a fatal neurological disease transmitted by prions. That is, the infectious agent is a defectively folded prion protein, not a living pathogen like a virus or bacteria. It can survive being incinerated, or being buried for years in the ground with only a modest reduction in its disease-causing ability. The epidemiological model for the danger of BSE is kuru, a fatal but otherwise rare neurological disease that was common among New Guinea highlanders back in the 50's and 60's. Kuru reached epidemic proportions due to the practice of human cannibalism, usually of the brain. The regional government finally banned the practice, which (eventually) led to the decline of kuru incidence.

So what's this got to do with hamburgers? "Rendering" is the innocuous term for the practice of grinding up left-over animal organs, tissues, spinal cords etc that are considered unfit for human consumption, then selling it as Meat & Bone Meal (MBM) or Tallow. Agribusinesses use MBM as cattle and pig food and fertilizer (like on vegetables...); tallow has many uses including in the pharmaceuticals and cosmetics industries. Rendering is cow cannibalism, as it were, which is believed to have amplified the incidence of BSE in Britain, just as cannibalism amplified kuru in New Guinea. If you have never heard of rendering then you need to read this book. The British experience of CJD should have been a lesson to US politicians, bureacrats, cattlemen, and the FDA, because the "new variant" of CJD that has killed numerous British persons is actually a prion disease derived from the BSE prion, that is, from cattle. That is, people have died from from eating prion-infected beef.

It is also worth noting that CWD, or Chronic Wasting Disease, is another prion disease currently becoming a major health problem in wild cervids (deer, elk and so on)--and potentially in the people who hunt and eat them. Large, prion-infected deer populations have been reported in several states, including Wisconsin and Colorado. As of today (14 July 2002), Wisconsin opened deer season several months early & intends to keep it open all year, in order to decimate a population of 25,000 prion-infected deer. Guess what? The NBC news report did not mention that CWD is a prion disease related to BSE, probably because they didn't know (& didn't bother finding out). But guess what else? Prions rather easily jump species boundaries: mink to cattle, cattle to human, squirrel to human....Once opened, its a real Pandora's box that sets one's mind to wandering.

[To really be in the know, try a Web search on "cattle rendering" and read what you find. It's enough to make you sick. Cow and pig tissues are widely used in the pharmaceutical industry and in many products intended indirectly for human consumption: hog feed, chicken feed. It is also used in pet food--to think that even my cats might be eating this stuff. There was also a report of a British vegan--a *vegan*, mind you, for a dozen years--who inadvertently got CJD from her pet cat food.]

Despite the flambuoyant title, this is a well-researched and closely reasoned book. It is also well-written and an exciting read. The frightening thing is how unknown these dangers are... This may or may not be the final word on the subject (an update on progress since 1997 would be nice), but it is certainly an eye-opener. If you don't do anything else, read the quote from Nobel laureate Carleton Gadjusek on page 218 (Gadjusek solved the Kuru mystery). In my opinion, the broad public health and policy implications of prion diseases and the practice of rendering make this book a must-read for every informed citizen.

Rating:
Summary: Too Much Trivia
Review: Parden the pun but where's the beef?
If Dr. Gajdusek was accused of child abuse, how does that relate to Mad Cow?
If Kuru affected some brain eaters before Mad Cow entered the world's vocabluary does that require a whole chapter?
If sheep drop dead from a relative of BSE who cares?
The authors buried the dangers of beef so deep in unrelated and unimportant information, an earth mover couldn't get to the point.
Most meat eaters will write this book off as pure science totally unrelated to everyday life.
Ironicly, those same meat eaters have the most to loose from a carnivore diet. While BSE is rare, there are a million other reasons to avoid meat not the least of which is the filthy slaughter houses.

Rating:
Summary: The book that predicted it - Mad Cow USA
Review: Six years before the appearance of mad cow disease in the US, this book predicted it. Mad Cow USA warned that the meat industry and the government were failing to take the necessary steps to prevent the disease here, and using falsehoods and PR to cover-up their failings. Unfortunately, this book nailed it.

Rating:
Summary: Real page turner--but the horror ending is just beginning!
Review: Three years after this superb analysis was published, Mad Cow Disease remains an underreported and largely neglected topic (by mainstream Americans, anyway). If one checks out the Mad Cow Disease Homepage, however, one finds that the problem not only has not disappeared but also seems to be spreading throughout both Europe and the U.S. Buy this book; share its contents with everyone you love; and beware overconsumption of candy altoids (made in the UK with beef gelatin)!

Rating:
Summary: Well documented, clear discription of a deadly reality.
Review: When a topic as potentially sensationalistic as "Deadly Disease Being Spread to US Population with Covert US Government Cooperation" needs to be dealt with seriously, it takes responsible journalists to keep hysteria from distorting the facts. Rampton and Stauber have succeeded where others would have failed. The topic of the book is how the meat industry, their public relations firms and the governments of the USA and Britian worked together to attempt to conceal important information about a newly discovered disease that was abroad in the human food system. The truly frightening truth is that Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE, or Mad Cow Disease) is a real thing. It is one disease in a class known as Transmissible Spongiform Encephalopathy that have, until recently, been little researched and little understood. This book does not describe an episode of "The X-Files." People have died from it and are continuing to die from it. The authors documented the entire process of a growing crisis that has potentially world-shattering implications to millions of Americans. Pulling together original source material from obscure (and perhaps at time even hostile) sources they describe how the events unfolded and reason the events unfolded as they did. An important note is that this book is not, and does not pretend to be, a scientific treatment of BSE, TSE's or any other topic. Its approach is more realistic. The authors lay out the occurances as they transpired, uncovering innumerable bits of information that were never before collected together or presented to the general public. The book details the scientific minutae only to the degree it is relevant and stops short of either lecturing or preaching. Explaining who the players have been, their position the entire affair (including the financial risks and implications to the meat industry, the pharmacutical industry and the cosmetic industry) and where they are at the time of printing is a real life detective story whose final chapter has not been written. The only significant frustration I had with the book was the "99%" nature of some of the time oriented information. The footnotes were excellent in identifying th original sources, yet were not always clear as to if the dates were referenced were to indicate when information was released or when the actual experiment / event / discovery occurred. In fairness, I cannot level this criticism with much force, as my scrutiny of the footnotes comes from my intent to develop a fully documented timeline and collection of original source material. That they failed to do my chosen job while undertaking their own agenda can hardly be a cause for blame. As the facts concerning BSE and TSE's continue to unfold it becomes clear that the cricis is far from over. There are still more revelations to come. As more court cases come up based on the Food Disparagement / Veggie Liable Laws, the war rages on. This book give a powerful reference to help understand new events as they unfold over the next several years. Caution in reading this book may be advised, though. The material can be sufficiently frightening in its implications, you may feel the need to make new choices in lfe.

Rating:
Summary: HITS THE NAIL ON THE HEAD!
Review: When a topic as potentially sensationalistic as "Deadly Disease Being Spread to US Population with Covert US Government Cooperation" needs to be dealt with seriously, it takes responsible journalists to keep hysteria from distorting the facts. Rampton and Stauber have succeeded where others would have failed. The topic of the book is how the meat industry, their public relations firms and the governments of the USA and Britian worked together to attempt to conceal important information about a newly discovered disease that was abroad in the human food system. The truly frightening truth is that Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE, or Mad Cow Disease) is a real thing. It is one disease in a class known as Transmissible Spongiform Encephalopathy that have, until recently, been little researched and little understood. This book does not describe an episode of "The X-Files." People have died from it and are continuing to die from it. The authors documented the entire process of a growing crisis that has potentially world-shattering implications to millions of Americans. Pulling together original source material from obscure (and perhaps at time even hostile) sources they describe how the events unfolded and reason the events unfolded as they did. An important note is that this book is not, and does not pretend to be, a scientific treatment of BSE, TSE's or any other topic. Its approach is more realistic. The authors lay out the occurances as they transpired, uncovering innumerable bits of information that were never before collected together or presented to the general public. The book details the scientific minutae only to the degree it is relevant and stops short of either lecturing or preaching. Explaining who the players have been, their position the entire affair (including the financial risks and implications to the meat industry, the pharmacutical industry and the cosmetic industry) and where they are at the time of printing is a real life detective story whose final chapter has not been written. The only significant frustration I had with the book was the "99%" nature of some of the time oriented information. The footnotes were excellent in identifying th original sources, yet were not always clear as to if the dates were referenced were to indicate when information was released or when the actual experiment / event / discovery occurred. In fairness, I cannot level this criticism with much force, as my scrutiny of the footnotes comes from my intent to develop a fully documented timeline and collection of original source material. That they failed to do my chosen job while undertaking their own agenda can hardly be a cause for blame. As the facts concerning BSE and TSE's continue to unfold it becomes clear that the cricis is far from over. There are still more revelations to come. As more court cases come up based on the Food Disparagement / Veggie Liable Laws, the war rages on. This book give a powerful reference to help understand new events as they unfold over the next several years. Caution in reading this book may be advised, though. The material can be sufficiently frightening in its implications, you may feel the need to make new choices in lfe.

Rating:
Summary: Don;t get scalped!!!!
Review: You can get paranoid over anything--there is no vaccine for Hepititis C (unlike B), which can cause liver cancer in 40 years and can be spread by needles in hospitals, and speaking of liver and 40 years, certain non-fatal species of malaria lay dormant in a human liver for 40 years before becoming active ... further, you can catch malaria (the fatal kind) by visiting an international airport in the USA where overseas transients and mosquitoes are found (so-called "traveller's malaria").

According to the FDA and USDA, there are no known cases of BSE in the USA, and this book attempts to prey on people's fears to the contrary. Even the European scare arguably was overblown (since no clear nexus between rendering and BSE has ever been found, and some of the victims of BSE were too young to have been affected by prions).

But, you can believe what you want to believe, and some people believe in Roswell aliens...