Is There More To Mad Cow Disease Than The U.S Department Of Agriculture Is Telling?

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Factory farming in the U.S. engages in practices which compromises the safety of the food supply.

The British and European outbreaks of BSE ignited because the industry turned cattle — natural vegetarians — into cannibals, feeding them the remains of cattle and other animals. U.S. farmers did the same, but Britain had a huge incidence of a related disease in sheep called scrapie, and many scientists believe that was the source of the massive cattle outbreak. Although experiments showed that BSE could infect monkeys and other animals, it was not until the first human infections that anyone realized the threat it poses to people. The human form of the disease, first discovered in Britain in the 1980s, has been blamed for the deaths of at least 280 people worldwide, with 175 in the UK alone.
How could the California cow have been infected with feed? Following the British outbreak, ranchers in the U.S. and most of the rest of the world stopped feeding cattle the remains of cattle, sheep and other mammals. But a farmer’s feed still could get contaminated by other means. The USDA still allows chickens to consume the remains of cattle. Chicken litter, containing urine and feces, is fed to cows. That could theoretically transmit the infection to cattle.

FDA Fails to Protect Consumers from Antibiotic Saturated Food Supply

A coalition of consumer groups filed a federal lawsuit Friday against the US Food and Drug Administration over the use of human antibiotics in animal feed, citing that it creates dangerous superbugs.

The suit alleges that the regulatory agency concluded in 1977 that the practice of feeding healthy animals low doses of penicillin and tetracycline could lead to the rise of antibiotic resistant bacteria in people.

“Accumulating evidence shows that antibiotics are becoming less effective, while our grocery store meat is increasingly laden with drug-resistant bacteria,” said Peter Lehner, NRDC executive director.

FDA did not immediately respond to an AFP request for comment.

Last year, the FDA authorities pressed farmers to give fewer antibiotics to livestock and poultry to reduce the risk of potentially harmful resistance to antimicrobial drugs.

Yet FDA officials stressed the drugs could play a key role when used properly.

Factory farming promotes illness for animals who live in filthy and over-crowded conditions and who are fed large amounts of corn which they can not digest which allows them to grow at an unatural and alarming rate causing a host of health problems requiring antibiotic use.

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