Adding in additional substances to the cows corn diet, such as remnant cow parts, has led to e-coli out breaks in humans and continued to spread mad cow disease. One such victim of e-coli poisoning was Kevin Kowalcyk at the age of two. He ingested e-coli O 157 H7 in a contaminated hamburger he ate in 2001; which developed into hemolytic-uremic syndrome and resulted in his death twelve days later. Unfortunately the beef was not recalled until 16 days after his death. This was probably due to the fact that cattle at CAFO’s spend all their time held up in concentrated pens standing in their own feces.
Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy Commonly called ‘Mad Cow Disease’ is still a top priority for the Food and Drug Administration and the other government agencies. Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE) is a chronic, degenerative disorder affecting the central nervous system (brain and spinal cord) of cattle (FDA Consumer). BSE is very fatal for cattle. When the first case of BSE, or Mad Cow Disease was suspected in the United Kingdom 18 years ago, the US immediately halted beef imports from the UK and has never reopened them and in 1989 the US banned importing ruminant animals and at risk ruminant products to the US from countries with confirmed cases of Mad Cow Disease. These countries include the United Kingdom, France, Belgium,
“What’s the Case?” In the early 1990s there was an epidemic among livestock in New England. There were approximately 170,000 cattle found to have “mad cow disease”, so name because the condition attacks the central nervous system, which leads to bizarre behavioral symptoms and often death. The disease appears to have been caused by an “unconventional transmissible agent,” meaning it is unlike most organisms. No genetic material has ever been detected from this organism in infected tissues, although there are foreign protein fibers that accumulate in aggregate in the brain. Infected cows were still turning up in the late 1990s to early 2000s.
Once you start doing that the cows that are being eaten are the sickly one or the one’s who die on the farm and are sent to a rendering plant to be made into a powder mix that is in turn feed right back to the livestock. If the animal used to make the powder was a infected animal then the animal who consumes that animal will become sick also which in turn causes the meat we will be eating to become tainted. We still don’t know of the far reaching effects to eating a cow that’s infected with some sort of disease, scientist are just now starting to link Alzheimer’s disease and dementia to possible side effect to meat consumption. And what was once an honorable profession being a farmer is now nothing more than an assembly line of death and disease, if we don’t change something and fast we wont even be able to feed our growing population by the mid 2000 because over 50 percent of our farm land is being used just to feed our livestock for human consumption. The feed to meat ratio is way out of whack it takes 50pounds of feed to produce one pound of meat, at that rate we will never have enough crops to feed the worlds people and our food supply.
Today the top Four companies (Tyson, Cargrill, JBS and National Beef) control more than 80% of the worlds meat market. With such high demands on these companies to produce so much, there are compromises that are made. These companies treat their livestock, and employees in a horrific and sickening manner. The animals are fed mostly corn products and given antibiotics daily. Most animals stand knee high in their own feces all of the time.
Many unsanitary and just plain disgusting routine procedures of this industry are unknown to most consumers. One example would be using dead pigs and dead horses along with chicken manure for cattle feed. Practices like these are to blame for epidemics like mad cow disease an e-coli. Eric Schlosser's book was written to inform the reader about the truth behind
Diet For New America : Yahel Michaeli, Section# 3155 1. What are the main health problem and the main environment problem that the movie talks about? - The main health problem in the movie are : Heart diseases , diabetes , cholesterol, and breath cancer . The environment problems are water problems: to grow cows and authors animals for meat we need to use thousands of gallons of water, in that case lots of water are wasted the earth is getting dried and we will stay without water , also if people will stop to eat meat, there won't be so much pressure to grow more and more cows . The cows will live by their self , and we'll have more water for us and the whole environment.
(Almost 80% of all antibiotics sold in the United States are used in animal agriculture.) C. Diseases 1. Spreading of bacteria, viruses and fungi “Far from their natural habitat, the cattle in feedlots become more prone to all sorts of illnesses. And what they are being fed often contributes to the spread of disease. The rise in grain prices has encouraged the feeding of less expensive materials to cattle, especially substances with a high protein content that accelerate growth” D. Transportation Billions of farm animals endure the rigors of transport each year in the United States, with millions of pigs, cows, and “spent” egg-laying hens traveling across the country.
Many fruits and vegetables have a certain time of year that they are plentiful however they are now modified to ripen before their season. The majority of the meats in the meat department are boneless. Hamburgers have E. coli and it has proven to be fatal. Soy and corn are patented and owned by the world’s largest genetically modified organism company in the world Monsanto. Farmers are persecuted and sued for accidentally infringing on Monsanto’s seed “rights”.
• Gastrointestinal (GI) anthrax, as its name suggests, occurs when the bacteria is ingested. If an animal is infected with anthrax and is then slaughtered for its meat, and the infected meat is not cooked properly, the meat will leave the consumer with chronic stomach pains, bloody diarrhea or vomiting, loss of appetite and/or nausea. GI anthrax is significantly more serious than cutaneous anthrax and has a higher mortality rate of 25-60% (BHC, 2012). • Pulmonary anthrax is the least common, yet most deadly form of anthrax; this form of anthrax can be used as a weapon in bioterrorism. Bacteria spores are inhaled by victims, causing influenza like symptoms and eventually death to 70-80% of victims in spite of treatment (BHC, 2012).