(no subject)

[lapsedmodernist]

I really fail to understand why people who are familiar with the same information as I continue eating beef. Seriously, mad cow disease is a prolonged and nasty way to die. You lose your mind, you lose control of your central nervous system, and eventually you are rendered immobile and mute before you finally expire.

The government doesn't let private beef ranchers test their own cattle, at their own expense, but people think I am paranoid?

this is from 2004

The Department of Agriculture refused yesterday to allow a Kansas beef producer to test all of its cattle for mad cow disease, saying such sweeping tests were not scientifically warranted.

The producer, Creekstone Farms Premium Beef, wanted to use recently approved rapid tests so it could resume selling its fat-marbled black Angus beef to Japan, which banned American beef after a cow slaughtered in Washington State last December tested positive for mad cow. The company has complained that the ban is costing it $40,000 a day and forced it to lay off 50 employees.

The department's under secretary for marketing and regulation, Bill Hawks, said in a statement yesterday that the rapid tests, which are used in Japan and Europe, were licensed for surveillance of animal health, while Creekstone's use would have ''implied a consumer safety aspect that is not scientifically warranted.''[!!!!!!!}

Lobbying groups for cattle ranchers and slaughterhouses applauded the decision, but consumer advocates denounced it, saying the department was preventing Creekstone from taking extra steps to prove its product was safe.

Under the Virus Serum Toxin Act of 1913, the department decides where cattle can be tested and for what.

Consumer groups accused the department of bending to the will of the beef lobby, saying producers do not want the expense of proving that all cattle are safe or the damage to meat sales that would result if more cases of mad cow are found.


Also, from today's news:
Mad-cow scrutiny is scaled way back

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) recently scaled back mad-cow testing by more than 90 percent [PLEASE KEEP IN MIND THAT UP UNTIL NOW THE USDA WAS TESTING 1%, THAT'S ONE PERCENT OF THE COWS BEING SLAUGHTERED; NOW THAT 1% TESTING RATE IS BEING SCALED BACK BY OVER 90%, DO THE MATH], leading to closure of the WSU lab and several others around the country. The agency has backed off plans for a mandatory animal-tracking system, which can help identify the source of an infection and other animals at risk, and now says the program will be voluntary.

Several of the unappetizing — and risky — practices that came to light in the wake of the initial mad-cow case are still allowed, including the use of cow blood as a food supplement for calves.

Also, someone, please tar and feather Joe Lieberman.

I think I have to add him to my list of people [George Bush, Ralph Nader] who comprise the category of "if you support them, you are either stupid, or evil, and I want nothing to do with you."

Comments

[mashuta.livejournal.com]

o shi! so, do i get to chose which one i get to be, stupid or evil, or does one label get assigned to me by powers that be? ah, i'll just be both, i guess. can use one as excuse for the other.

[lapsedmodernist.livejournal.com]

no, I choose whether someone is stupid or evil. It's like this: if they still insist that there is no difference between Bush and Gore, then = stupid. If they are down with Nader's egomania, unethical funding choices and campaign worker abuse because they share in his dream of punishing the democrats, then = evil. Another litmus test for "evil"? Objections to and sabotage of vote-swapping in borderline states in 2000.

The binary is really pratically useful to me for Bush, mostly. I haven't yet disowned anyone socially for supporting Nader or Lieberman (although I may in the future). I have completely cut social ties with people based on them voting for Bush (if they voted for him twice). People have called me close-minded for that, and you know what, I am TOTALLY okay with that.

[mycrust.livejournal.com]

Well, not that I would try to defend the meat processing practices in the U.S., but I was under the impression that all of the confirmed cases of BSE being transmitted to humans seemed to involve people who actually ingested brain or spinal tissue from infected cows. Which is not to say definitely that you can't get it from eating a steak, but there are reasons that you might guess that your risk is actually pretty low.

[lapsedmodernist.livejournal.com]

do YOU feel confident in what kind of crap ends up in your fast food ground beef meals?

[mycrust.livejournal.com]

Well, if you're first sentence had been:

I really fail to understand why people who are familiar with the same information as I continue eating fast-food hamburgers

then I would agree with you.

[mycrust.livejournal.com]

err, correct spelling and subjunctive verbs as needed.

[brooklyn-jak.livejournal.com]

ditto. But I'll keep eating my hangar steak and beef stew made from beef purchased at the park slope food coop. Yum.

[lady3jane.livejournal.com]

Man, Lieberman has always been an elephant in donkey's clothing. I can't stand that guy, never could. And you'll hate me because I voted for Nader in 2000, but Lieberman was a huge reason why I made that choice.

[lapsedmodernist.livejournal.com]

you voted in WA, right? It wasn't a swing state, if I remember correctly. I have no problem with people having voted for Nader is non-swing states; I even have no problem with people casting votes for Nader through the vote-swap program in swing states; I thought that was a great idea.

I really hate the people who won't acknowledge, even now, that the tweedle-dee/tweedle-dumb myth was an evil myth, and who encouraged Nader in 2004, arguing that in the two-party system there is no difference between the neocons and the democrats. Even if I bought the argument that both Republican and Democratic parties largely have the same thing to offer voters (which I don't, because they do have crucial differences on issues that I care about, but I see where that argument comes from, because historically both parties have mostly skewed to the center), this administration is not an administration of standard Republicans. They are--as Chomsky calls them--radical reactionaries. There is barely anything recognizable of the Republican platform in their agenda. They are religious fundamentalists and warhawks. And I do not believe for a second that America would be as horrifying and monstrous place as it is today, if Gore was rightfully in the White House.

[lady3jane.livejournal.com]

Yes, my vote was in WA, so I didn't really have to agonize over my decision.

I have to admit at that time I was much more of a mindset that there was little difference between the two main parties. I still leaned toward the Dems because where they do differ I prefer them. I believed, and still do, that our government would be much better served if there were multiple parties and though I knew my vote wouldn't suddenly make the Green Party viable, it was nice to vote with some optimism for a change. I also did not believe for a moment that Bush would get elected (and I'm convinced he wasn't elected, but that's a whole other discussion). Even the Republicans I know were embarrassed by him in 2000 and could not bring themselves to vote for him.

They are--as Chomsky calls them--radical reactionaries. There is barely anything recognizable of the Republican platform in their agenda. They are religious fundamentalists and warhawks. And I do not believe for a second that America would be as horrifying and monstrous place as it is today, if Gore was rightfully in the White House.

I whole-heartedly agree.

[lady3jane.livejournal.com]

Oh, and, I couldn't find any reason to encourage Nader in 2004. I wouldn't have voted for him anyway, because he was not the president our country needed at the time, but I also think his antics during that election were wrong and I could not have supported him.

[cos]

"I really fail to understand why people who are familiar with the same information as I continue eating beef."

In my case, because I consider the risk to be tiny, and I know I already voluntarily take many risks of much higher orders of magnitude frequently.

(Not that I eat beef very often, but I don't make a special effort to avoid it)

[lapsedmodernist.livejournal.com]

well, that's the thing, I think it is impossible to assess how big the risk actually is, because the testing that would need to be done for a proper risk analysis is not being done. At least I know what my odds are of dying in a plane crash, and I don't think that those statistics are manipulated/covered up.

[cos]

The main reason it's hard to assess this risk well, is because it's so incredibly tiny that it's beyond measurement. It's not even in the same league as the risk of dying in a plane crash if you fly a few times a year, for example (and that's a pretty safe thing to do, that is also overshadowed by other far greater risks of everyday life).

We can look at how much beef people eat, and how many of them eat it, and compare that to how many of them get BSE. We can look at past outbreaks of BSE, and how long they lasted and how many people they infected. These will only give us a vague idea of the precise risk, but they give is an excellent idea of the approximate magnitude of it: approximately zero.

Among the multitudes of risks that could kill me that are many orders of magnitude higher than BSE are not only things like traffic accidents, but also things like severe food poisoning from random other foods, or getting accidentally shot while walking in my neighborhood.

[monkeypunk.livejournal.com]

I continue eating beef because in order for a prion to actually take root and give me mad cow disease I'd have to ingest infected brain or spinal tissue.

I counter this possibility in two ways:

I only buy ground beef at farmer's markets from certified farmers who have 100% grass-fed cattle. No hormones, no antibiotics, and no (and this is key here) infected bone marrow or animal matter ground into the feed for cheap protein. Their cattle are pretty much not at risk

I eat a lot of steaks/ cuts of meat rather than the ground up miscellaneous bits.

The disease has been around for a long time, and in sheep as well as cattle, and has not yet brought about then end of the human race. There are more immediate dangers from the myriad soy products crammed into nearly every available food product. Also, because of my diabetes thing, there's precious little I can eat that I enjoy as it is, so I cling to what I've got :)

And besides, prions are just so damn cool.

[lapsedmodernist.livejournal.com]

Yes, soy = def. creepy, and seemingly in ways that can't be controlled for by organic vs. non-organic (i.e. synthetic estrogen). Even though I love me some edamame, I'd rather stick to organic meat products over tofu, in general. I do like the taste of soy milk, but my body has a reaction to it that is either allergic or intolerant, so it's probably good that I am forced to avoid it.

Given slaughterhouse conditions, I don't feel confident that some infected tissue couldn't have ended up mixed in with my slices of beef, in very small quantities, obviously, but hey, prions are tiny.

I will eat beef when I know it came from a grass-fed local farm. Because of the dilution of the "organic" label, I don't quite have the same confidence in store-sold organically labeled beef. If I knew exactly where the cow came from, no problem. I ate beef all the time in Ecuador, and no one tests for mad cow there, but you also know where your cows are coming from--the farms down the mountain, where you see the cows grazing when you drive by.

[monkeypunk.livejournal.com]

Granted, but you could use the same argument to never eat fruit or vegetables, as they might have e. coli. Come to think of it, they never found the reservoir for Marburg or Ebola viruses.... As far as whole cuts of meat go, the prions don't live in muscle tissue, so even if an animal is processed in the same facility as a diseased one, unless there's brain garnish on your roast, you're ok.

I think there's a certain point where one has to say "I took reasonable precautions." and leave it at that. What constitutes reasonable precautions will be different for each person. Some may choose never to drink, since liver and throat cancers are such a drawn out terrible way to die, some will avoid beef, some will avoid chicken due to a very poor understanding of how flu is passed, and some will ride helmetless down the freeway in the rain on a motorcycle.

[apropos.livejournal.com]

Their cattle are pretty much not at risk

Except for being at risk for living a miserable life and then dying to feed overstuffed first worlders. Sorry, it's Feb. 22 and I have not yet met my sanctimonious vegan quotient for the month.

Grass-fed and organic beef is processed at slaughterhouses that handle regular beef. They clean the machines, so cross-contamination by prion diseases, etc. is not an issue, but all the issues about cruelty, sanitation, and working conditions are the same.

Prions are cool. have you read Kuru Sorcery?

[monkeypunk.livejournal.com]

Yeah, in response, I'll just give you the lyrics to "Cheeseburger" by the Decepticonz.

Wow,
You're in serious.
Wow,
why are you so furious?
Does the world owe you attention?
Baby, I don't understand
your vegan rock convention
praising you and your master plan.

You think you've found the answers
and you'll scream until we think you're right.
I didn't come here for salvation,
you are not my guiding light.

Step down.
I'm out
Step down.
I'm out.

I eat this cheeseburger in defense of all that's good
So don't look at me like I need a reason
'cause I just don't think I should.

So no,
I don't feel guilty.
My conscience is at ease.
I pick my battles, and I don't need to fight about what I eat.

So

Step down.
I'm out
Step down.
I'm out of reasons.

Wow.

As the commissioner of pretentiousness
You win.
You're right,
you're the holiest.
Is it lonely on your pedestal?
Up there everything must be clear as crystal.

Step down.
I'm out.
Step down.
Step down.

Which is meant to convey that I fully respect your right to believe and practice whatever you choose. However, be it religion or diet, I don't appreciate unsolicited proselytizing. The phrase "at risk" in context clearly referred to exposure to mad cow.

[the-macnab.livejournal.com]

*bows down*

[apropos.livejournal.com]

The phrase "at risk" in context clearly referred to exposure to mad cow.

Sorry for the misunderstanding. My comment was intended as a flip non sequitur (as in, "while we're redefining risk"...), and not an attack. anthrochica and I often banter about risk consciousness, correlation vs. causation, and popular health fallacies.

[monkeypunk.livejournal.com]

Typed text is often a poor medium for flippant humor. I apologize as well, for jumping to conclusions. I am seriously sick of the holier-than-thou evangelical attitude that so often comes up the second meat is mentioned in any context.

[bricology.livejournal.com]

Decepticonz, eh? Fuckin' nouveau lightweights. Try this with your fries:


"Ronald laughs as millions starve and profits forever increase,
You're stenching farts as they smile; they say they try to please.
Plastic chairs and fake shakes to help it all go down,
Polluting your children with their lies and trying to destroy your mind.

Corporate Deathburger -- Ronald McDonald
Corporate Deathburger -- Ronald McDonald
Change from your five, ankles deep in blood
Make it your career, sell billions every year

Golden arches and Ronald smiles
Golden arches and Ronald smiles

Ronald laughs as billions starve and profits forever increase,
Feeding all your grain to cows, dead children rest in peace.
The stench of humans rotting smells just like Fish Fillet
Your sign neglects to mention fifty thousand starved today.

Corporate Deathburger -- Ronald McDonald
Corporate Deathburger -- Ronald McDonald
Change from your five, torture camps for cows
Slaughter and starvation from Death Corporation

You say you're Christians but you're all fake
Multinationals on the take
Starving children deserve a break today."


That song was recorded 25 years ago by Millions of Dead Cops, who could eat Decepticonz for a snack, er -- if only they weren't vegans.

[monkeypunk.livejournal.com]

Yeah, seen MDC multiple times in concert... all five of them. We weren't discussing fast food here though, and my point still stands. Thanks.

[biascut.livejournal.com]

I am probably not the target audience for this rant, being British rather than US-ian, but I continue to eat beef on occasion because the number of people who have died of v-CJD is tiny compared to the number of people who have died in road accidents, and yet many people still drive and I still do occasionally. As far as I can tell: Total deaths from v-CJD as at 3 February 2006 (http://www.dh.gov.uk/PublicationsAndStatistics/PressReleases/PressReleasesNotices/fs/en?CONTENT_ID=4127942&chk=BYpAWz), 154. Deaths from traffic accidents in the twelve months prior to March 2006: 3180 (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/5256506.stm). I mean, y'know? I'm not remotely pro-factory farming, and I'm bloody glad that we now have stricter controls on what livestock can be fed. But if you want to avoid horrible early deaths, it seems to me that you'd be better off leaving your car in the ice than avoiding beef.

Personally, of course, I think that if I were going to contract v-CJD, chances are I would have contracted it in the UK in 80s, back when I still got fed appallingly cheap beefburgers at school and long before there were such strict controls on meat products. When the news about BSE was confirmed in the mid-nineties, my mum was among the 90% of British people who took advantage of reduced-price beef products to fill the freezer. I'm ineligible to give blood here in Ireland or, in fact, anywhere outside the UK, regardless of who I've had sex with or when I last got tattooed or pierced.

I don't want to be complacent about BSE or factory farming - a university friend of my brother's died of v-CJD, I think, and he went to her funeral down on the Isle of Wight, and it sounded absolutely horrible. (I think I accidentally deleted a couple of voicemails she'd left him on an ancient mobile of my mum's that we both borrowed, which I probably never quite stop feeling bad about.) But people's ideas of what's life-threatening and what isn't are screwed up. I'm absolutely certain that goes for me, too, but - yeah. Beef. De-forestation, methane emissions, soil erosion ... BSE is probably the last of our worries.

[biascut.livejournal.com]

Hm, this comment was more late night rambly than I thought at the time. Sorry!

[chelvis.livejournal.com]

I think one issue that's not addressed by people who continue to eat beef, feel proud about eating beef, and scrounge around for reasons to continue to eat beef is that for them (not that they would articulate it as such) it's seems as feminizing to give up beef, or care one iota about the myriad reasons to stop eating it - it's them being stubborn, not caring about the wasted time and energy and wasted resources to raise beef. I don't know if you have to face that when discussing giving up beef with people, but I do because I some macho friends who in turn have more macho friends and siblings who reinforce this kind of thing.

you said somewhere in the chain that soy is creepy... care to explain?

[the-macnab.livejournal.com]

I think one issue that's not addressed by people who continue to eat beef...it's [sic] seems as feminizing to give up beef...

So, are you talking about male "people," then? It seems like we might need another explanation for the non-trivial number of women who continue to eat beef...

Being stubborn, ignorant and uncaring about the economic, environmental, social and health costs of eating meat is bad enough, not least because that probably IS why so many people continue to eat meat. Suggesting that people really eat beef because they're afraid for their manhood is excessive at best and silly at worst.

[chelvis.livejournal.com]

It seems like we might need another explanation for the non-trivial number of women who continue to eat beef...

Yeah, we would need another explanation for the number of women who continue to eat beef. My remarks about vegetarianism feminizing guys of course doesn't apply to them.


Suggesting that people really eat beef because they're afraid for their manhood is excessive at best and silly at worst.

That would be silly, and such a clear link not what I'm suggesting at all. My remarks about vegetarianism feminizing guys is Just One of the reasons (an overlooked reason, as I state right off the bat) why beef-eating guys are adamantly opposed to even entertaining the validity of giving up beef - these are the guys who say things like "I didn't climb my way to the top of the food chain to ear carrots!" or "I'm a carnivore!" as reasons why they won't scale back their ingestion of meat. I think I raise these concerns because it's one psychological hurdle some guys must surmount in thinking about not eating beef - that eating meat being related to their masculinity (while possibly having a shred of credibility) is a now unworkable outlook. If you think that eating meat is not related to masculinity, just recall those burger king ads from a while ago "I am Man!".
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PbGEOob5x4g&mode=related&search=
It's nonsense, of course, but possibly seductive nonsense.

I read your other comment, don't worry, it wasn't snarky:)
-chelvis

[the-macnab.livejournal.com]

Sorry, I just re-read my reply and it sounds snarkier than I meant it to be. My basic point was that I think ignorance and apathy are usually sufficient explanations without dragging in sexual insecurity, not least because they're also better at explaining women's behavior.

[bing-crosby.livejournal.com]

you know, it's so sad that Nader has completely fucked up his own legacy. Because he had so much to do with exactly what you are talking about-- the right of consumers to know what they are buying, the imperative for government to enforce safety codes/etc. Granted, he didn't work on food issues that I know of. But his work on consumer rights and people's personal buy-in to government regulations laid a lot of groundwork for current demands for change.

But yeah, having voted for him in 2000, when I naively thought 3rd party politics were a path to change (and I might still believe it, but I'm not willing to gamble anymore (n.b. this was not Florida, which is the only place it really mattered))-- I can't say anything nice about his persona post-2002 or so.

[bing-crosby.livejournal.com]

incidentally, I am veg (except for fish occasionally) but I don't really think not eating beef (or chicken, or fish, or whatever) in itself is a path to safety. It's all about the small producer, the person who taken his/her own responsibility for the product rather than doing the gov't bare minumum. I think this applies to veggies and dairy just as much as (though with less serious health consequences) meat.

Re: Nader

[orpheusinhades.livejournal.com]

FYI, I voted for Nader in 1996 (hated Clinton's centrist pandering), but disowned him in 2000 because of his chronic lying.

If you didn't see it, you might check out "An Unreasonable Man" - while overly "NADER IS GOD", it actually contains some information that anti-Nader folk (like myself) might find interesting - addressing some of the concerns (like Republican funding and swing state bias), and totally glossing over others (like votes in Florida, which they dismiss with a totally idiotic argument). Anyhow, it's worth seeing from an "I want to have an educated point of view for my feelings about Nader" standpoint, in my view.