Every time you eat a hamburger or steak, what you are really eating is recycled chicken feces. The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) regulations allow chicken feces to be used as feed for cows. American farmers feed their cattle 2 million tons of chicken feces each year. This cross-species practice worries scientists who are concerned about the increased risk of mad cow disease contaminating meat products. Mad Cow disease or Bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), is a fatal disease which literally causes the brain to melt slowly shutting down cognitive function little by little. First you lose concentration, then your speech goes, and eventually all brain function stops altogether. It's a horrifying way to die.
It occurs when vegetarian animals are made to eat non vegetarian food and then killed for meat. The biggest cow user in the world, McDonald's is, believe it or not, seeking to ban the practice, saying "We do not condone the feeding of chicken litter to cattle." After all they don't want their customers looking at a hamburger and thinking, "I am paying for second-hand feces." Center for Science in the Public Interest and the American Consumers Union have also joined the fight, petitioning the government to ban the practice.
Ask me why chicken feces fed to a cow could cause Mad Cow disease. It's because chickens are fed ground up parts of other animals such as chickens, cows, sheep and other animals. Some of that chicken feed spills out and gets swept up with the chicken feces or litter which is then fed to cows. The meat industry has concocted a bizarre cocktail in which dead cows, sheep, goats, pigs and other animals are fed to chickens, and then chicken feces is fed to cows. These cows, in turn, are ground up and fed back to the chickens and us.
Am I talking only about America/Australia and Europe? No. The same model exists in Asian countries except that it is done secretly. I will tell you my own experience. Many years ago, I received a complaint about a gaushala in Madhya Pradesh. Old and rescued cows were being given to the gaushala but within a few days all them died. The gaushala was owned by a man who was prominent in the cow-saving movement and, in fact, held a very prominent government appointed state position in that field.
I investigated. It turned out that all the cows brought in were deliberately starved to death. Why? The owner had a poultry at the back. The dead cows were mashed and fed to the chickens who were later beheaded and sold as meat.
All the animals you eat are vegetarians. They do not normally eat meat or even the feces of other animals. Chickens don't eat cows in the real world, either. Normally they live on a diet of insects and weeds. But the compulsions of cheap meat farming in factories has created this unnatural food cycle threatening all meateaters with Mad Cow Disease. Alzheimer’s disease is a similar form and for a continent that had not a single case 70 years ago, look how fast it is spreading in Asia. In America’s every 72 seconds one person develops Alzheimers. From 2000-2006, Alzheimer's disease deaths increased 46.1%. It is the 7th largest cause of death.
It takes approximately 5 - 7 years after eating an infected burger for Mad Cow Disease to destroy the brain of the eater. Cooking the meat does not destroy the mad cow disease germ. In cattle BSE has a long incubation period, about 4 years, usually affecting adult cattle when they are four to five years, all breeds being equally susceptible. In Britain alone, more than 179,000 infected cattle were identified and killed but between 460,000 and 482,000 BSE-infected animals had, by then, entered the human food chain. By October 2009, it has killed 166 people in Britain with the number expected to rise because of the disease's long incubation period. Rather than trying to ward off this disease the industry continues to feed corpses to chickens, and feces to cows. Why are the figures low still in America of mad cow disease? Because, believe it or not, the USDA has banned farmers from testing their cattle for mad cow disease!!
Every time India is isolated for a disease, every politician and “scientist” goes crazy and denies having the disease at all. Remember the recent tamasha when India was identified as the home of the antibiotic resistant superbug. Our politicians claimed that this was a plot to prevent tourists from coming for the Commonwealth Games.
India has been equally vociferous in denying that we have Mad Cow disease. The fact is that we have no way to test it nor do we want to. As a matter of national patriotism we will continue to deny we have it specially since it is not lucrative to acknowledge it, since the pharmaceuticals have nothing to treat it with (On the other hand, every flu is swine flu because the Health Ministry has bought millions of Tami flu tablets and has to sell them now).
But, according to British scientists in Lancet magazine, Mad Cow disease may have originated from animal feed contaminated with human remains washed ashore after being floated down rivers. Professor Alan Colchester of the University of Kent and scientists of the University of Edinburgh in England say they believe that the Mad Cow disease outbreak in Britain may have been caused by the tonnes of animal bones and tissue imported from India for animal feed, which may have contained the remains of humans infected with Mad Cow disease. They base this theory on the fact that a large amount of imported animal feeding material was brought into Britain during the period when BSE must first have occurred and the largest source, more than a third of a million tonnes, was from the Indian subcontinent. The scientists believe the contaminated feed led to BSE from eating meat from infected cattle, which means that the subcontinent has to have had Mad Cow disease long before anyone else.
Is eating meat worth the risk? Is chicken feces essential to your diet?
Maneka Gandhi
To join the animal welfare movement contact This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
It occurs when vegetarian animals are made to eat non vegetarian food and then killed for meat. The biggest cow user in the world, McDonald's is, believe it or not, seeking to ban the practice, saying "We do not condone the feeding of chicken litter to cattle." After all they don't want their customers looking at a hamburger and thinking, "I am paying for second-hand feces." Center for Science in the Public Interest and the American Consumers Union have also joined the fight, petitioning the government to ban the practice.
Ask me why chicken feces fed to a cow could cause Mad Cow disease. It's because chickens are fed ground up parts of other animals such as chickens, cows, sheep and other animals. Some of that chicken feed spills out and gets swept up with the chicken feces or litter which is then fed to cows. The meat industry has concocted a bizarre cocktail in which dead cows, sheep, goats, pigs and other animals are fed to chickens, and then chicken feces is fed to cows. These cows, in turn, are ground up and fed back to the chickens and us.
Am I talking only about America/Australia and Europe? No. The same model exists in Asian countries except that it is done secretly. I will tell you my own experience. Many years ago, I received a complaint about a gaushala in Madhya Pradesh. Old and rescued cows were being given to the gaushala but within a few days all them died. The gaushala was owned by a man who was prominent in the cow-saving movement and, in fact, held a very prominent government appointed state position in that field.
I investigated. It turned out that all the cows brought in were deliberately starved to death. Why? The owner had a poultry at the back. The dead cows were mashed and fed to the chickens who were later beheaded and sold as meat.
All the animals you eat are vegetarians. They do not normally eat meat or even the feces of other animals. Chickens don't eat cows in the real world, either. Normally they live on a diet of insects and weeds. But the compulsions of cheap meat farming in factories has created this unnatural food cycle threatening all meateaters with Mad Cow Disease. Alzheimer’s disease is a similar form and for a continent that had not a single case 70 years ago, look how fast it is spreading in Asia. In America’s every 72 seconds one person develops Alzheimers. From 2000-2006, Alzheimer's disease deaths increased 46.1%. It is the 7th largest cause of death.
It takes approximately 5 - 7 years after eating an infected burger for Mad Cow Disease to destroy the brain of the eater. Cooking the meat does not destroy the mad cow disease germ. In cattle BSE has a long incubation period, about 4 years, usually affecting adult cattle when they are four to five years, all breeds being equally susceptible. In Britain alone, more than 179,000 infected cattle were identified and killed but between 460,000 and 482,000 BSE-infected animals had, by then, entered the human food chain. By October 2009, it has killed 166 people in Britain with the number expected to rise because of the disease's long incubation period. Rather than trying to ward off this disease the industry continues to feed corpses to chickens, and feces to cows. Why are the figures low still in America of mad cow disease? Because, believe it or not, the USDA has banned farmers from testing their cattle for mad cow disease!!
Every time India is isolated for a disease, every politician and “scientist” goes crazy and denies having the disease at all. Remember the recent tamasha when India was identified as the home of the antibiotic resistant superbug. Our politicians claimed that this was a plot to prevent tourists from coming for the Commonwealth Games.
India has been equally vociferous in denying that we have Mad Cow disease. The fact is that we have no way to test it nor do we want to. As a matter of national patriotism we will continue to deny we have it specially since it is not lucrative to acknowledge it, since the pharmaceuticals have nothing to treat it with (On the other hand, every flu is swine flu because the Health Ministry has bought millions of Tami flu tablets and has to sell them now).
But, according to British scientists in Lancet magazine, Mad Cow disease may have originated from animal feed contaminated with human remains washed ashore after being floated down rivers. Professor Alan Colchester of the University of Kent and scientists of the University of Edinburgh in England say they believe that the Mad Cow disease outbreak in Britain may have been caused by the tonnes of animal bones and tissue imported from India for animal feed, which may have contained the remains of humans infected with Mad Cow disease. They base this theory on the fact that a large amount of imported animal feeding material was brought into Britain during the period when BSE must first have occurred and the largest source, more than a third of a million tonnes, was from the Indian subcontinent. The scientists believe the contaminated feed led to BSE from eating meat from infected cattle, which means that the subcontinent has to have had Mad Cow disease long before anyone else.
Is eating meat worth the risk? Is chicken feces essential to your diet?
Maneka Gandhi
To join the animal welfare movement contact This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.