mad cow desease in usa

I'm kind of familiar with the new tagging system, Chrissy, although my family is mostly out of the cattle business now. That doesn't, or shouldn't, apply as much in this case as it would in a beef operation operation though.

My Grandfather on one side of the family and my uncle on the other side both ran dairies. A holstein cow is tracked pretty much from birth because of the money involved. That's especially important in Canada because of the quota systems for milk sales. Steers, even on a dairy farm, are really just hamburger on the hoof. Cows are a different matter though...there is far too much money at stake. I find it highly unlikely that we don't know how old this cow is.

In the case of this cow it was apparently showing no symptoms, so it could have been infected in Canada or the US. It really doesn't matter because the infection spreads through feed and the feed could have come from anywhere...it crosses borders as a matter of course.

Bookie is right...this problem will not go away until we confront it properly. Feeding cows to cows is a stupid idea. They are evolved to eat grass. Until we confront that issue properly (feed meat to cows, go to jail...even if you are the owner of Cargill) we will not beat it. Maybe, just maybe, now that BSE has been found in the US somebody will clue in to that.

Rev I agree with you completely about feeding cows to cows. It's a stupid practice on so many levels. The thing to find out now is where are the rest of the sick cows??? Even on a dairy farm I highly doubt that each cow is fed seperate and distict foods. Nobody feeds cows like that.

I spent the last two hours reading about bse on buzzflash (thanks for giving me the word on buzz rev) Anyways I kinda doubt if they can find all the sick cows Chrissy. there are 100 million cows in the states which in my mind is one hell of a big feeding ground for bse.
I may have taken somethings out of context but from what I read there sure is a hell of a lot of missing paper work. so I would think some people are trying to cover something up. You know what I mean ignore it the problem will go away. This problem is not gonna go away untill the fda and canadian health authoritites figure out a new testing system. Anyways that is my take on it.

I didn't mean the feed Chrissy...guess I was a little unclear. I meant the missing two years. There will be records of what feed came from where and when though...you have to keep your tax records for seven years in case you get audited.

I was referring to breeding and milk production records though...a holstein heifer with blood lines shown to produce a lot of milk is worth more than one from less successful lines. That's why careful records are kept on the cows. Same for the milk production records.

Some place in all those records will likely be any unusual supplements or feeds given to the herd or individual cows too. I know the kind of records my family kept and that was before computers...I would imagine things are even more carefully watched now.

There is one way to get rid of this problem.

Not that I agree with it.

Anyone remember what they did in Britian? Mass murder of cattle... I'm sure a lot of those cows were healthy, but hey... problem solved. No more worry about sick cows if there are no cows to be sick.

I would like to know which idiot decided it was a smart idea to feed his cattle meat. Someone who knows so little about an animal shouldn't be allowed to raise them.

We really need to start keeping a closer eye on ranchers. Yeah yeah... a lot of people will be upset with me for that comment, I'm sure, but really... a problem like this wouldn't have happened at all if people were forced to learn a little bit about the animal they were raising first.

You know how they don't let people operate heavy machinery until they've learnt how to? Well what's heavier than a cow?

Anyway. I don't know anything. Just my two cents.