The wife and I very rarely eat beef (after this mad cow thing will no longer eat beef) we eat buffalo that isn't given all the chemicals and crap that store bought beef contains. Though its a little more costly I like it better than beef.

for those of you who haven't heard, not one person has died from mad cow disease here in the US. you would be putting yourself in more danger just by getting behind the wheel and driving to the grocery store.
so go ahead and throw out all the beef in your freezer and lock your doors, the media will tell you when its safe to go outside again

Just another case of over reaction....."Let's make a law."...... Some people spend way too much time listening to Channels 4,5, 7.....the home of super sensationalism. (Can we just have the facts, please?)
I'm not an advocate of eating diseased cattle, but how does that equate to ambulatory? A broken leg certainly doesn't affect meat quality. And I certainly am not an FDA inspector....but I'll just bet they are doing this... .....at least the ones not looking to just make their job easier. The "look good at all cost politicians" are a joke.
No doubt most cattlemen are like Spawnout....when they go down...they're coyote meat. I seriously doubt that anyone drags these downers onto the cattle trucks. It would make no sense to have a downer cow take up as much room as two heathy cows because it needed to sprawl out. Come on.
When one of the cattle go down in the pasture across my field (not my animals) the owner drags the carcass over to the tree line. The first time I saw this done I thought, "Aw Crap! Boy is that going to stink!" Later that same day, the buzzards started arriving and for three or four days there were maybe 20 birds with their wings spread each morning soaking up the early morning sun. Then they left. Never smelled a thing....they picked that thing clean. I was amazed.
ahhhhhh back to fishing

Okay, here are the facts as reported by the U.S. Government. Approximatly 130,000 cows per year that are too sick to stand make it into the U.S. food supply. (I suspect in many cases they were able to stand when loaded into the truck but became too ill to stand before the end of the trip. Often the cattle are hauled long distances.)

Now I admit that 130,000 is small number considering the total amount of old dairy cows slaughtered each year, but its a number that we could easily eliminate, were it not for politicians who STOPPED an attempt to ban the practice last year.

No a just becuse a cow can't stand doesn't mean it is sick, but it sure as hell could be . This one was. Yes, I am for a law that says we don't feed sick cows to the public and another that says we test cows that appear to be sick BEFORE we send the meat off to the public. I do not think that is an over reaction.

Apparently we NEED to tell folks that farmed salmon are fed a natural substance to color their meat, but we don't need to tell consumers, "This old worn out dairy cow was too sick to stand up when we slaughtered it." bon apetite!

MCD = PMS...GOOD ONE...When I first heard the news about the mad cow deal I immediately had a picture in my mind of the sign I threaten to put up at work:

DANGER..COW CROSSING....Now the MAD COW is so perfect I can't stand it. I don't think women generally like to be referred to as COWS though.... Especially the ones with the hyphenated last names....Help me out here AuntyM...Am I right on this? So I bet being referred to as having mad cow disease might be over the line....Ya think?

One more comment.....
I suspect that most don't know that cattlemen are not allowed to give their cattle antibiotics that could cure their "disease".
Good thing we aren't cannibals.....I'd never pass the FDA regs for consumption.

Looks like a few people have a that could never happen to me mentality well I hope it never does happen to you or any of your family. Myself I dont care to be the first in the U.S to be affected by this disease or eat meat with a bunch of chemicals and crap that shouldnt be in it in the first place.

Stlhdfishn…and others

Don't be to sure about biting into that nice juice Buffo steak or bugger!

And Spawnout …don't be to sure about that nice elk bugger or summer sausage either

Maybe you all will enjoy reading this one;

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/1306563.stm

http://www.sciencenews.org/20021130/bob9.asp

Cowlitzfisherman

I amazed that there's so little being said about Creutzfeldt Jakob Disease (CJD) and the mad cow variant that infects so many deer and elk IN THE UNITED STATES. Here's a couple of quotes from the BBC story:

".........A farm in the mountains of Nevada may hold a key to the puzzle of Mad Deer disease.

The farm's owner, a cowboy called Jim Koepke, died suddenly from Creutzfeldt Jakob Disease (CJD), an illness very similar to both BSE and the Mad Deer variant.

.....Jim Koepke was the third deer hunter to die in the last two years from CJD.


....But in Colorado, where as many as one in five deer and elk now has the disease, the authorities are urging caution. "

WOW!

That is indeed frightening news CFM. Makes you wonder about farms that feed elk thru the winter... wouldn't that be something if it turned out ground up beef scraps were put into that feed.

Thanks, but I'll stick to fish for now!