We shouldn't have treated Saddam like a cow!!!

Keith Johnson

Correct me if I'm wrong, but why would prices go up? If people stop buying beef, that will increase supply, and prices should go down.

When they discover a Mad Cow infection, they generally kill the whole herd it came from and don't allow any of its meat to go to market.

Supply will go down if we get many more infections. On the other hand, you're right, demand might drop too, so it may be no big deal. I hadn't thought of that.

Beef prices have been going up anyway, thanks to the Atkins Diet.

I noticed that beef prices are horribly high, lately. Is really because of Atkins?

I'd hate to be a investor in cattle futures right now. Gad! can you imagine it?

With Japan and South Korea banning our beef prices will almost certainly fall. Only if they find mad cow widely distributed accross the US herds would they destroy enough beef to cause the price to climb.

Beef prices are seasonal. They rise in late November and through December in part driven by the greater tendency of people to dine out during the holiday season. Typically the price of beef falls again by mid-january.

Rosemary:

Is there an echo in here or is it just me...?

Ara: No, I posted the question to fast. I meant, is it really because of Atkins dieters that the beef prices are up?

Fred answered the question, though. I hope he's right because I'm getting sick of pork and chicken.

Prices of beef have been skyrocketing for two reasons, first we banned imports of Canadian Cattle after Mad Cow was found up there AND the Atkins diet has creatly increased demand for beef. The thought goes, Mad Cow drives beef prices way down because it reduces demand with out much effect on Supply unlike Hoof and Mouth disease (I think it was). The US exports something like $10 billion in cattle, and having that cattle back in the states will far offset any decrease in supply from the destruction of one herd. (But I don't know that they do that unlike with H&M.)

Also, about 3 weeks ago, there was a grain growers convention on how so many people have shifted away from grain to beef, and that it's hurting their bottom line badly. Atkins is having a significant impact and the most talked about impact, but so is the restriction on imports, there is some seasonal aspect to it, but I think that is actually one of the smaller factors, Chili's and similar restaurants recently raised prices on beef courses, and have started to suggest to their customers "alternative" dishes. Lots of stories about this out there...Here's one.

Joel B, if I understand it correctly, but I could be wrong, MCD "can" be caused by feeding cows a mixture of grains and the ground up carcasses of other cows/animals, some of which may be infected but undetected.

The grain growers would do well to push the use of their produce as feed for the cattle alone, without the, umm, protein additives.

They say that Mad Cow disease is passed on by feeding to other animals the neural parts of a cow. There is a pretty clear message from various agriculture types (US, Britain, Canada), that mad cow is not passed on through muscular tissue. What this means to them is, basically you can eat hamburger/steak but stay away from Hot Dogs and below. And cardeblu, what you say is a lot of what has happened cattle are no longer fed those parts of the cattle. Perhaps we should just go back to grazing altogether, supposedly, they taste a lot better when grass fed.

If there's a silver lining...Beef Prices Plunged so that steak you love might just be getting cheaper.

Alternatives:

1) Eat more pork and less beef. Maybe pork's got more fat and if "porky" was male, he tastes like warmed-over shit if they didn't castrate him before killing him and making chops out of him. But at least it won't fry your brain like mad cow beef.

2) Eat more fish and less beef. What could be more tasteless than warmed over refridgerator fish, canned tuna, or crap like that.

3) Eat more chicken and less beef. Cut off the skin before you cook it, then it won't absorb so much fat.

4) Eat more turkey and less beef. "Cold turkey" didn't get a reputation like that of dried fruit cake for no reason at all, and turkey in general tastes crummier than chicken in general. But, hey...

5) Eat soy patties and no beef at all. In no time you will feel more Japanese than American, but your brain will not get fried.

6) Kvetch about all this anxiety, watch CNN's "science" reports about Mad Cow Disease, and complain that nobody's doing anything about it. But go on eating whatever crap you've been eating since you stopped sucking mama's milk. Chances are nothing bad will happen except that you will feel guilty for enjoying youself instead of becoming socially conscious like all the damned liberals.

Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI

When they discover a Mad Cow infection, they generally kill the whole herd it came from and don't allow any of its meat to go to market.

That's hoof&mouth, not mad cow. Mad cow takes 7-10 years to develop and is not spread between animals. That is, it is not contagious, you catch it by ingestion.

"Muscle cuts" are safe to eat anyway, but avoid brains. (I've managed to avoid eating brains all my life, except for a short period in survival school where I would eat anything that would hold still).

I grew up in Nebraska and had several rancher uncles who raised cattle. Grain fed beef tastes much better than grass fed. That's why so many cattlemen feed them grain. It used to be that imported beef (South American and Australian?)
was scorned as "grass fed" tough and tasteless beef. Don't know if that is still the case now. My dad, God rest his soul, claimed he could always tell the difference.

Now, I live in Iowa and can tell you that most of the corn we raise here is fed to livestock. If cattle production falls, so will grain demand maybe.

Wait a second, you already have a mad cow. She is called Rosie O'Donnell.

Gary Utter:
"That's hoof&mouth, not mad cow. Mad cow takes 7-10 years to develop and is not spread between animals. That is, it is not contagious, you catch it by ingestion."

No, but I thought they still destroyed the herd because other, equally old individuals had probably eaten from the same feed lots way back. Maybe cattle farming works differently on the huge ranches in the States, but I'm pretty sure that that's what happened when they discovered a few infected animals here in Japan a few years ago. Then one of the Vice-Ministers of Agriculture, Forestry, and Fisheries appeared on TV eating domestic beef, with ostentatious lip-smacking, to assure the good citizenry that it was safe. That always happens when there's a food-related fuck-up.

I don't know about other places, but they killed the entire herd that the Alberta mad cow was in, as well as any cattle that had been pastured with it at any time. And the parts of the cow that carry BSE come in all sorts of stuff you wouldn't think of - Jello, ju-jubes, yoghurt, ice cream, vitamins, lip gloss. So it's kind of silly to avoid beef, because you're probably eating it somehow anyways.

See? This is where abortion on demand has brought us all.

Furthermore...uh...whoa! Sorry. Way too much eggnog.

No, but I thought they still destroyed the herd because other, equally old individuals had probably eaten from the same feed lots way back.

It depends on what herd the cow originated in. This is a MILK cow, not a beef cow. Milk cows are handled in an entirely different fashion that beef cows.

Beef cows are a CROP. From birth to "harvest" is rarely longer than 3 years. They don't get traded around much, although they are often sold as calves.

With milk cows, there are TWO crops, milk and calves. I have seen a good milk cow live for more than 20 years. As long as she produces calves and sufficient quantities of milk, she is valuable. If the calves themselves are good milkers, a cow will live as long as she can breed, even after she stops producing significant quantities of milk.

Beef cattle often have thier feed "enhanced" with things to make them grow faster or better, or to make the feed cheaper without lowering the growth rate of the cattle. This has led to cows (and pigs and goats and chickens and about any animal that is raised as a crop) being fed products that include recyled animals.

What do you do with a cow that is too old to make saleable beef and who can no longer produce calves or milk? You don't just put her out to pasture (unless you are a small and very sentimental farmer). You sell her to a processing plant.

After the processing plant has taken all of the cow (or pig, or goat) that can be used for things like glue and Jell-o and motorcycle jackets, what is left over gets ground up and used as an extender in things like animal feed and fertilizer.

If you feed cows ground up cows, and one of the cows you ground up had BSE, the cows who eat that feed run the risk of catching BSE.

You MIGHT kill a whole herd if one of the cows comes down with BSE, but for the most part, you do it for public relations, not public health.

The cow in question originally came from Canada (if I heard the lady from Agriculture correctly). She may very well have come from the same source as the cow that was found with BSE in Canada. Or maybe not. :)

I note with some amusement that many Canadians were outraged when we closed our borders to Canadian beef after Mad Cow was found in Canada. They don't seem to be feel that is is unreasonable for our trading partners to close their borders to OUR beef. :)

"You MIGHT kill a whole herd if one of the cows comes down with BSE, but for the most part, you do it for public relations, not public health."

No trouble believing that. And as far as the hypocrisy over the ban goes, yeah, we all knew that was coming, but it's still pretty funny. Last night, NHK showed some Japanese tourist returning from the Northeast Corridor with a bunch of souvenir boxes of beef jerky, which were solemnly confiscated by the agricops at customs. You could actually hear, over the newscaster, his protests along the lines of, "It's beef jerky! It was cut from the cow months ago--and I'm not going to sell it!" Naturally, if more BSE cows were found in Japan, we'd have the government all over the networks begging us all not to stop eating domestic beef.

Turns out the infected cow came from Canada, not from Iraq.

The whole issue has been blown way out of proportion anyway. This is not a crisis, as the media wants you to believe.

Do not forget... this is one cow.

One. Cow. Out of millions upon millions of cattle head.

The risk of infection in humans is miniscule. You are more likely to be killed tripping on a sidewalk than you are eating beef at your local restaraunt.

This is not an epedemic in either the USA, or Canada. You will not find a single Canadian who is afraid to eat Canadian beef.

This ban on importing Canadian Beef is ridiculous, arrogant and pigheaded. It should be lifted in its entirety.