Mad Cow
For those of you that haven't heard, some cows on the planet Earth have a disease called mad cow disease. It came from our farmers making our cows (and chickens and hogs actually) into cannibals. To cheapen animal feed and reduce their leftovers from the slaughterhouse, farmers have been feeding our animals remains of that same animal. Brains, eyeballs, spinal cords, blood, pretty much everything else, and a pinch of the good old regular animal feed (corn, grains, etc). This has F'd our animals up over the years. Cows now have mad cow disease which basically degrades a cow's brain into swiss cheese (it actually eats holes and canals through the brain, the swiss cheese is just a joke-y reference). Since it's discovery, the US government has changed the law so that you can not feed an animal it's own species brains, eyeballs, and spinal cords. Everything else is fair game, including all those "bad" parts, but from different animals. Now with chickens and pigs there is no regulation since no disease has yet been found. So they still eat that crap. Here is one main problem about mad cow, if you eat a piece of infected meat, you get the disease. Cooking the meat doesn't kill the disease either. You can burn a steak to charcoal and still get the disease from the charcoal. Another problem is that you usually don't see symptoms for 30-40 years. I kind of assume all of our beef has mad cow. We will not see an epidemic for some time because of this incubation time. But it will be too late by then. Japan regected our past 2 shipments of beef because of things like brains, eyeballs, and spinal cords being included in the shipment EVEN THOUGH they told us not to have it anywhere in sight. We eat this without hearing anything about things like this, but other countries will not even buy our animals. And the first case of mad cow in the US did happen in December 2003. The government immediately killed the press on it, and we went on assuming everything was OK. They say that people now limit their intake of ground beef, hot dogs, and steaks BUT the demand for beef in the US has not changed at all. Read "Fast Food Nation" or "The Jungle" if you do not know what goes on in the meat industry. It is gross but for more reasons than just how the animals are killed. How they live is also gross. Antibiotics, hormones, disgusting food, cruel living conditions, and a government covering up for their very rich supporters...the meat industry (they contribute a large sum of money to every president to keep legislation to a minimum). Because of things like this, I assume our meat is contaminated and that we will have a problem down the road. I also buy organic meat because I know the animals just eat grains (imagine that! no eyeballs for them) and roam the land grazing instead of being packed shoulder-to-shoulder in high density feed lots ((packed with hormones (to grow big in a short amount of time and without exercise) and packed with antibiotcs (because they literally are stuck shoulder to shoulder in a puddle of their own crap)). It's something no one thinks about, but they should. YOU should! Just telling you how it is. It sounds like a movie but this is what goes on. Support organic.