Mad Cow in the US - Dishonest Beef
CategoriesWhile I do not subscribe to the hysteria around BSE or "mad cow disease" and have posted information that shows the official scientific explanation to be little better than hogwash, I find it disturbing to see a recent account by one of the people working in the meat processing plant, where the "first and only" cow with BSE in the US has been found, which shows signs of a government hushing-up job.
The circumstances of the find are intriguing, and the fact that testing has since been abandoned should be more widely known. So, in the name of transparency, here's the story as told by Dave Louthan of Moses Lake:
Is the beef safe? Who knows?
My name is Dave and I work at Vern's Moses Lake Meats. I did until the day the mad cow test results on the Sunny Dene cow came back positive for BSE. That was Wednesday, Dec. 24. On Friday, Dec. 26, the KXLY news crew was at the end of Vern's driveway, locked out by a cable gate. The USDA had told the world that the mad cow had been slaughtered here, but it was not in the food chain. A blatant lie. It was one of many.
I walked out to the news crew at lunch time because I can't stand a government cover-up. They asked me "was the cow in the food chain?" I told them of course it was, it's meat. Where else would it be? They asked me if the cow was a downer. I told them no, it was just an old cow.
The USDA had us taking brain stem samples from downers and back door cripples only. Since we only had a few walkers on this trailer full of downers, we just killed her along with them. We took a brain sample from her head because the USDA gives up $10 per sample.
If we would have unloaded her in the pens, we would have never caught the BSE. How many other walkers have BSE? We will never know. The USDA only tested the downers and cripples and only at our plant. We had only been taking brain samples for about a month when we found this one.
When the USDA said no more downers would be slaughtered, they essentially said no more BSE testing would be done. Vern's and every other slaughterhouse kept right on killing and selling Holstein meat from the same area as the mad cow with no BSE testing whatsoever. This is true and easily verifiable.
And just so the folks in Moses Lake don't feel left out, the beef head, tongue, liver, kidneys and tail were sold right here in the Columbia Basin. It's way past time for everybody to stop thinking with their bank accounts and start trying to find a way to stop the spread of BSE.
The minute the USDA found the contaminated cow, they stopped the brain stem collection and testing. Why? Ka-ching! It's the money. Billions.
If you want to be sure you and your family are eating safe meat, demand testing on every beef slaughter. It's quick and easy. Don't eat another piece of meat until you see a sticker that says tested and cleared for BSE on the package. BSE is 100 percent fatal -- if you or your kids get it, you die a very painful death. It's a slow, wasting disease. It's terrible.
Right now, a lot of people are telling you how safe their beef is, but they don't know if it is or is not without testing. That's their checkbook talking. Tat rendering plant in Canada wasn't feeding 81 cows, it was feeding thousands of cows. Every second that goes by, more untested beef goes on the dinner plate. If you eat mad cow, you are going to get sick and you are going to die. Stand up and demand safe meat.
Dave Louthan
Moses LakeThe story was originally published as a reader's letter by the Columbia Basin Herald
Recent update (March 2004)Hi there Dave Louthan here.
See I told ya we'd get it figured out. J. Patrick Boyle CEO of AMI is slapping Ann Veneman around like a rag doll. Get the Canadian border open and do it now. He says he wants to do it to spur all foreign countries into buying our meat but the fact is he's got a lot of beef standing up there eating hay and getting to fat to sell.
I told everybody the meat people only had until calving season to get this fixed. That time is now upon us. All that inventory they have been holding back to keep the prices up must move now to make room for all the new feeders popping out now, today.
Take a drive in the country and start counting calves. They are everywhere. The dam is breaking. J. Patrick says we're not testing our cows and your going to eat them whether you like it or not. He's mad. He was forced to show his hand. He's the one that pulls Ann's strings.
At a press conference at AMI friday John Stewart CEO of Creekstone Farms said he will test all his beef whether the USDA approves or not. J.Patrick said no your not. John Stewart said we'll have to agree to disagree. J.Patrick said we'll have a private meeting when the reporters go home.
It's all on the Meating Place web site. Check it out. Here's the deal. J. Patrick demands Ann Veneman declare Canada a low risk country even though they have had a couple of mad cows already. She will do that. All those cows will start coming down here in droves.
J. Patrick will demand the U.S. Gov't start punishing all the countries that refuse our meat with trade embargoes, high tariffs and with holding of foreign aid. Mexico and some of the smaller countries will cave in to pressure. Japan and South Korea will not.
There will be a huge surplus of fat cattle waiting to be slaughtered. Prices will continue to plummet. All the smaller feedlots will go under right away. They will demand subsidies. The American taxpayer, you, will pick that up. The Gov't is already broke. George W. spent all the money beating up Saddam. Higher taxes will be necessary.
In the meantime we have a whole bunch of diseased cattle the powers that be don't want to do any thing about. They just want to play tycoon. Your not going to get sick for a while so unlike lysteria, E-coli, and salmonella they can simply push it under the rug in the name of Profit.
If this was a disease you got today and died tomorrow it would be a whole different ball game. As long as Joe Average is getting his bills paid on time and watching the evening news which is completely devoid of any MadCow reports he'll be content to sit there munching on contaminated beef and pretend that BSE is something that happens some where else. Besides it's perfectly safe and risk free the Gov't said so.
Time after time. When all those poor smucks start getting sick and are laying in the hospital with tubes running out their noses all of todays beef tycoons will be laying on private beaches in the South Pacific sucking down Margueritas and laughing about the time they tricked America into eating diseased meat and paying good money for the privilege.
My God why doesn't some body wake up the American people. NBC, CBS, ABC, CNN, FOX where are you. This is your job. If you want to be the reporters of the news stop worrying about your sponsors behave with Honor and start damn well reporting the news. Hello there is a story here.
Thank you for your time
Maddddcow@hotmail.com
http://www.davelouthan.org
Here another update from Dave Louthan - 17 March 2004:Well what do you know. The USDA blinked. We kept pounding away and they blinked. The USDA says they will now test 201,000 sick and crippled cows and 20,000 healthy ones. Not today but in a few months. Since Dec. 24 and June how many diseased cattle will have been killed and eaten. One for sure. Remember the 60 missing from the herd of 81. While the USDA held back the testing the farmers rushed those cows to slaughter. Now when June gets here the USDA will announce a 2 or 3 month delay getting the program started. And so on. Now is the most dangerous time to eat beef. Here's the scary part. According to the USDA in 2002: 251,500 cows died of unknown reasons or reasons that could be consistent with BSE related clinical signs. Let me translate that for you. The same people that kept telling you the meat was safe buy beef are now saying that 251,000 cows may have died of BSE in one year. 251,000. This information is available to you at www.aphis.usda.gov/ as a PDF file.
They announced this new program not out of concern for the safety of the consumer but because of pressure put on them by the Gov't, the consumer, and by our export partners Japan and S. Korea. Dr. DeHaven states its not for safety but to determine prevalence. That's what they were doing when all those poor people ate that mad cow in Dec. I don't want to learn about prevalence while I eat contaminated beef. I want these fools to start testing the beef I'm eating. My kids are eating. Right now today.
They say they will test 201,000 sick cows and 20,000 old cows. This is called scientific statistical testing. Dr. DeHaven says that if there are 5 sick cows in the country this will find them. What a crock. Let me explain statistical sampling. Let's say you have a football stadium full of people. You bring out one person and test him for AIDS. If he passes you say everybody in the stadium is healthy. That's statistical testing. It is obvious even to me that statistical testing only works if by some fluke you happen to get a sample from a sick cow. If you have one hundred cows lined up and the first 5 are sick but you only test the last 5 you are not going to find any sick cows. Period.
These idiots need to stop screwing around with science that is too complicated for them to understand and start allowing the professional beef producers to test their own beef.
Dr. DeHaven also pointed out that USDA thinks it will find the prevalence of this disease is very low. However, there is a chance they could find more positive cattle. "But keep it in perspective," he said. USDA says it anticipates some positive results at the initial screening level. "Keep in mind there may be false positives," he said. Translation: If we find any positives we will try to cover it up or deny at every opportunity. These people have compromised their integrity by lying and lying and lying and now there is no way I'm going to believe a single word they say.
Here is another shocker for you. They are still allowing blood and gelatin into the feed supply. The interim rules they announced were just suggestions because feeding the cows blood was not safe. The actual rules will not be ready for " a few months". Not to mention all the mountains of contaminated feed all ready on site. There is no way the ranchers are going to throw away feed they paid good money for. Would you? As always everything I have said here is easily verifiable. Take care.
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