Target: Bernhard Url, Executive Director of the European Food Safety Authority
Goal: Advocate for reinstatement of ban on farm animal feed containing potentially infectious animal remains.
An incredibly dangerous disease could be making a comeback in infected livestock and in humans. Outbreaks of so-called “mad cow disease” have shaped certain farming policies for years. The fatal ailment causes bovine victims to die within weeks after symptoms begin. These symptoms can include difficulty moving, weight loss, as well as swelling and degeneration of the brain. Researchers believe this horrific disease, which can infect humans who consume meat as well, is caused by cattle being fed meal full of animal remains.
In some cases, processed animal proteins (PAP) and meat-and-bone meal (MBM) made from the remains of dead chickens are fed to pigs. As another example, cattle might be given feed containing sheep remains, chicken remains, or even remains of other cattle. In the 1990s, this practice is theorized to have fueled a mad cow epidemic that led to the slaughter of over four million cattle. Shortly thereafter, the European Union made a critical decision to ban the use of PAP and MBM in any foods for farm animals.
As they always inevitably do, special interests have intervened, and this ban could be permanently lifted. Sign the petition below to urge a rethink of a decision that could have massive repercussions for the health and welfare of livestock and humans alike.
PETITION LETTER:
Dear Dr. Url,
For over 30 years, bovine spongiform encephalopathy has remained a looming potential catastrophe over farm life. At one point in time, the unforgiving “mad cow disease” was responsible for the deaths of nearly 200 people and four million-plus cattle. You may believe this deadly illness represents a negligible risk now, but make no mistake that easing vigilance on essential regulations will eventually lead to a resurgence.
MBM and PAP-infused feed are very likely the culprits driving this continuing threat. Permanently lifting the ban on these dangerous and unethical products will endanger farmed animals, expose them to potentially horrendous suffering, and put the lives of human beings at risk as well. The EU farming community has gone this long without such toxic methods. Do not cut corners and ask for preventable trouble in the name of needless greed.
Sincerely,
‘[Your Name Here]
Photo Credit: Kat Smith
If anyone should be feed this MAD COW INFESTED MEAT THESE CRUEL AND STUPID FARMERS SHOULD EAT IT, BUT NO ANIMALS SHOULD BE FED THAT EVER!!!!!
Eating meat is horrific cruelty to animals! Those poor creatures suffer their entire lives to be brutally murdered for some over fed person’s greasy hamburger. Eating meat is is a far more disgusting practice than forcing critters to be cannibals for human selfishness, not even mentioning what it does to our dying ecology. I understand your disgust, but I hope you and other appalled people have looked at ones own behavior that may be equally horrific and disgusting.
Having been aware of Kreutzfeldt-Jakob and related prion disease for some time, working to alert US and state agencies to the necessity of only strong predator gastric systems able to break down these malformed proteins (ultraviolet light does so, but herbivore salivation, feces, and even urine dispersal following infection, and its persistence even in soils protected from sunlight, have long expected the problem to re-arise).
We omnivores do not have such strong gastric acids, and herbivores less so.
Prion is an imprecise acronym shortening proteinacious infective[particles]. Different organism manufacture slightly different variant proteins, composed aas the latter are from very specific nucleotides constructed in very slightly different orders.
The processes of translation, transcription and other modification make proteins different.
Should some near-identical proteins change – the process is molecular, and erasing my original comment’s attempt to describe this, i just want to note that mutation of proteins constantly occurs across time. Mad Cow was one such protein too close to our own makeup. A couple others persist in ungulates and other animals, that could very easily become more like our own.
The problem of prions is that they are persistentlty frozen into dysfunctional shapes, and you know from basic biology that protein shapes are what make them useful for cellular constructions or enzymes, or just breakable energy-carrying amino acids.
Cell membranes have a great number of differing proteins allowing pasage of molecules and energy.
Oddly, these frozen prions cause similar areas in other proteins to “flip” into a shape that is both useless for its purpose, and infective, flipping other specific protein areas into this useless state.
Although cells are differentiated for different purposes their membranes retain similar “gating” structure.
This means that hair, dead cells, and every cell in a body are made both unable to function, and become infective through this electromagnetic contact .
Proteins acquired through evolution for use are flexible, malleable. Some are evolved for persistent structure,, as you know, and have only the utility of their constituent amino acids. You cannot digest keratin, for example, while some microorganisms can break these down. It’s all too complex to put into a note, so I quit. Just refer to physiological and cellular biology for more.
But organisms, cow, us, do not die immediately when infected. the process of flipping proteins engaged in structure can be slow, as the construction of structure is meant to be persistent.
So, it takes years in some cases for prion infection to cause significant harm. symptoms may not occur, not troubling the infected individual much for a long time. It is an accelerating process – more prions create more in the old grains of rice on a chessboard story.
If you have it at all, it’s too late. And your hair, every shedding you do, including your daily skin cell sloughing, can and will infect, if ingested others.
I initially expected prion disease to be the most likely plague to slash through overpopulated humanity, , even though the face-saving avoidant top-down government of China several times in the past twenty years signaled that protecting its reputation was more important to the entrenched officialdom than was health.
Just as ebola exists in evolutionarily resistant species, simmering presently only in tropical Africa, awaiting transmission by uncareful wildlife butchers and eaters, all too interconnected (Nigeria, as an example, is 1/11th the size of the US with a population 2/3 of that here, in our overcrowded USA. And the world has incessant daily air travel,with, as you saw in Covid-19, transmission before admitted detection. Luckily most nations – Nigeria is one of the world’s important oil-producing states and in high contact with the developed world do not imitate Chinese government in impropriety, and it has learned from that mistake. Nations like Nigeria cannot be called backward states in comparison, as can nations with lower levels of coveted resources, or the USA, with half its population involved in medieval resistance to science)
The prion vulnerability in North America is known, but the ignorant bushmeat and wildlife trophy minority here tends to actively politically suppress science in favor of blowing away everything that moves.
Um…what?
How STUPID does some people have to be? You think it’s so great, YOU eat it!
EVIL NEVER TAKES A BREAK.
The vile and evil Human species never takes a break.
VEGAN is the FUTURE!
ANIMAL FARMING promotes DEHUMANIZATION and DESENSITIZATION of the human race, and also SADISM and PSYCHOPATHIC treatment of animals. In addition it’s totally DETRIMENTAL and POLLUTING for our entire planet. You should be ASHAMED of turning ANIMALS into products. HUMANS are VERMIN!!!
SOME HUMANS ARE REALLY BEASTS … MISERABLE, CRUEL, SELFISH, GREEDY, PERVERSE, ILL BORN, TRASH, IGNORANT AND ALWAYS MANAGE TO GET AWAY WITH MURDER