http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2003/12/31/FDG7Q409GE1.DTL Some meat in hot dogs, sausages and ground beef, especially in frozen and processed products, comes from a process called "advanced meat recovery," in which meat is extruded from carcasses under pressure without crushing the bones. A 2002 USDA survey of AMR plants found that the meat from three- quarters of the tested plants contained central nervous system tissue.. "advanced meat recovery" -sounds tasty, pass ketchup ! [i'll have a salad please] :eek:
_______________________________________________ I do not dispute what you are saying. But please read what I am saying. The condition is out there but we don't know yet exactly what causes it. It is a condition pimarily of the elderly in all species. The forms of the prions are different in the various species. There is no known link between species of direct transmission. The common connection could be exposure to some substance which causes the prion condition in the susecptible species. If we spend all of our time looking for the wrong connection then we are putting off the solution.
[i'll have a salad please] ___________________________________ Organic or inorganic? Imported or domestic? Inspected or not? Cooked or raw? Washed or natural? Treated for freshness or not?(alaron)
I agree with all you said minus the elderly part. Have you seen the videos of teenagers in The UK so shaky they cannot hold themselves up...or pictures of the tribespeople of New Guinea with children afflicted with "kuru". Please read a book a called "deadly feasts" written by richard rhodes. http://www.as.ua.edu/ant/bindon/ant570/Papers/McGrath/McGrath.htm http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/search-handle-form/103-0805247-4732639
I agree with your point of not confined to the elderly but I said "primarily". It certainly is in bovines but that may be due to the incubation period being so long and the bovine life expectancy being so short. The USDA is testing downer animals so if the incidence should be high anywhere it should be in that group. The incidence of downer animals due to no obvious physical condition is very very small. (broken legs, backs, etc. are obvious) I was shocked that any down animal was allowed near any meat processing plant. They are not accepted at sale yards or any packing plant I know of. Not only downers but anything with a physical defect is turned away. Now the USDA has implemented that rule which is a very good thing. The economics of selling a down cow has for many years not been worth the effort. Nearly all either are destroyed, burned and buried or sent to the rendering plant.
You must excuse my rapid fire response without clearly interpreting your replies....this obviously is a very tender subject for me. Once I became semi-educated on the subject of downer cows I was shocked about the "disposal" i.e. the cannibalism and being sent to rendering plants...for goodness sakes if tempatures that can kill everything else on the planet except prions are used in the processing of soap, makeup and other products what makes the Gov think that people who use these products cant be affected....and to feed an affected cow to other animals...well, there are no words to describe that lunacy except for greed..plain and simple
Be careful about where you get numbers for downer cows. PETA and others notoriously wiggle the figures. They are exceedingly rare. Look at the economics for the livestock owner. Why keep and elderly unproductive animal to the point she has to be disposed of in this way. Ambulatory and healthy she is worth 300-500 dollars. Once she is old enough to be infirm she can't be sold and you have to pay $20 to have the rendering plant pick her up. Which would you choose? You are at least $20 better off to burn her and bury her than send her for rendering. The horrible thing in the Wash. case is that the owner probably got less than $20 for her or maybe had to pay $20 to get her hauled off. But the meat processor mixer her with healthy animals so she came virtually free to him but he sold her at the price of the others she was mixed with for which he probably paid $300-500. Guess who profited. Like they say follow the money
1997 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his discovery of Prions, University of California, San Francisco. http://www.ucsf.edu/neurosc/faculty/neuro_prusiner.html http://www.nobel.se/medicine/laureates/1997/