I love meat please don't kill me.
May/19/06 12:45 AM
Mr. President,
I hate to bring this up junior, but someone just died in Littleton Adventist Hospital in Colorado. This was no ordinary death. This patient died of a rare degenerative brain ailment called classic Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease.
Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease should ring a bell. The varient of it is more commonly called Mad Cow Disease.
Dr. Lawrence Wood chief medical officer for the Littleton Adventist Hospital stated that Classic Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, is a rare degenerative brain ailment which results in death and it is not related to mad cow disease - variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. According to Wood, it could take years before the disease is apparent and the only way to confirm it is with a brain biopsy.
The Creutzfeldt-Jakob patient died on March 23, nearly six weeks after the surgery, the disease was confirmed on May 9, officials said.
The hospital did not explain how the patient contracted the disease.
If we can believe the CDC, which I don't anymore, the Classic form of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease occurs in about one in one million people in the U.S.
http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/dvrd/cjd/
http://www.cjdfoundation.org/
I want to believe that it is not Mad Cow Disease. I really do. I love meat I am a true carnivore. I also want to believe in our USDA.
The Agriculture Department has a pretty contradictory mandate: to promote the sale of meat on behalf of American producers and to guarantee that American meat is safe for us beef-eating gas-guzzling Americans.
So I am sad to say its not hard to figure out which side the USDA flops in such a business-loving-republican-run government like yours.
Well-financed cattle and meatpacking industries dictated rules to the Republican congressmen for years, and those same congressmen repeatedly blocked efforts by Democrats and a handful of moderate Republicans to emphasis more procedures insuring consumer safety.
Let's cut to the chase here, your administration, ranks our safety right down there with helping starving children from Africa.
Back during the first outbreak of Mad cow in the United States the USDA claims to have tested about 20,000 cows for Mad Cow disease, but couldn't provide any documentation to prove it.
Even if you tested 20,000 cows, this is only a small percentage of the roughly 35 million cows slaughtered every year. Some experts say current procedures are unlikely to detect mad cow. Belgium, has a small fraction of our cattle population and they test about 20 times that number for the disease. Japan tests every cow.
Michael Schwochert, a retired USDA veterinarian in Ft. Morgan, Colo said, "It's always concerned me that they haven't used the same rapid testing technique that's used in Europe," where mad cow has been detected in several additional countries outside the United Kingdom."
Using poor testing methods and refusing to mandate a tracking system of cattle from birth to slaughterhouse to supermarket shelf; almost makes it like sound as though you don't want to find mad cow disease. And if we did find it or any other contaminated meat, we couldn't track where it went to or where it came from.
The procedure for testing cows in America begins when cows are unloaded off the truck. USDA veterinarians are required to test them as they are unloaded. If a sickly or downer cow is spotted by plant employees before USDA officials see the questionable cow "It can be returned on a different truck with instructions from the owner not to mention it to the inspectors ," Schwochert said.
Ann M. Veneman was the Secretary of the USDA in 2003 and she stated after a cow was identified with the disease on December in 2003, she said the case is probably isolated and the US beef supply is safe. "I plan to serve beef for my Christmas dinner," Veneman said, "and we remain confident in the safety of our food supply."
"The American Meat Institute, a trade group in Arlington, Va., representing the U.S. meat and poultry industry, claimed the U.S. beef supply is safe for human consumption."
"First and foremost, the U.S. beef supply is safe," AMI spokesman Dan Murphy told UPI. "We think its safe for U.S. consumers to eat."
Shortly after Veneman made her announcement, Japan and South Korea both banned the importation of American meat.
Ann Veneman resigned as Secretary of the USDA on November 15, 2004.
Japan the largest importer of meat products, banned American beef for two years afterwards. They agreed to lift the ban after they agreed to only accept young US cattle under the age of 21 months. Agricultural safety experts decided young cows were free from mad cow disease.
This January American beef was again banned in Japan after a U.S. meat packing plant shipped banned spinal materials in a batch of meat to Japan.
Japan has not lifted the ban as of today.
I am trying not to over react here junior, but you can't inspect your way out of a paper bag even if you wanted to and the cattlemen's association lobby would pitch a fit if you did. So this latest case of an undisclosed cause for classic Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease is really creepy.
It takes years for Mad Cow disease before any symptoms appear, but I'm warning you junior. The Republican's will not get my vote in November if I begin to display prominent psychiatric/behavioral symptoms; painful dyesthesiasis; and delayed neurologic signs while I am barbecuing a steak this summer!!!!
From: comments@whitehouse.gov
Date: May 19, 2006 1:20:47 AM CDT
To: guzmatom@mac.com
On behalf of President Bush, thank you for your correspondence.
We appreciate hearing your views and welcome your suggestions.
Due to the large volume of e-mail received, the White House is
unable to respond to every message, and therefore this response
is an autoreply.
Thank you again for taking the time to write.
I hate to bring this up junior, but someone just died in Littleton Adventist Hospital in Colorado. This was no ordinary death. This patient died of a rare degenerative brain ailment called classic Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease.
Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease should ring a bell. The varient of it is more commonly called Mad Cow Disease.
Dr. Lawrence Wood chief medical officer for the Littleton Adventist Hospital stated that Classic Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, is a rare degenerative brain ailment which results in death and it is not related to mad cow disease - variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. According to Wood, it could take years before the disease is apparent and the only way to confirm it is with a brain biopsy.
The Creutzfeldt-Jakob patient died on March 23, nearly six weeks after the surgery, the disease was confirmed on May 9, officials said.
The hospital did not explain how the patient contracted the disease.
If we can believe the CDC, which I don't anymore, the Classic form of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease occurs in about one in one million people in the U.S.
http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/dvrd/cjd/
http://www.cjdfoundation.org/
I want to believe that it is not Mad Cow Disease. I really do. I love meat I am a true carnivore. I also want to believe in our USDA.
The Agriculture Department has a pretty contradictory mandate: to promote the sale of meat on behalf of American producers and to guarantee that American meat is safe for us beef-eating gas-guzzling Americans.
So I am sad to say its not hard to figure out which side the USDA flops in such a business-loving-republican-run government like yours.
Well-financed cattle and meatpacking industries dictated rules to the Republican congressmen for years, and those same congressmen repeatedly blocked efforts by Democrats and a handful of moderate Republicans to emphasis more procedures insuring consumer safety.
Let's cut to the chase here, your administration, ranks our safety right down there with helping starving children from Africa.
Back during the first outbreak of Mad cow in the United States the USDA claims to have tested about 20,000 cows for Mad Cow disease, but couldn't provide any documentation to prove it.
Even if you tested 20,000 cows, this is only a small percentage of the roughly 35 million cows slaughtered every year. Some experts say current procedures are unlikely to detect mad cow. Belgium, has a small fraction of our cattle population and they test about 20 times that number for the disease. Japan tests every cow.
Michael Schwochert, a retired USDA veterinarian in Ft. Morgan, Colo said, "It's always concerned me that they haven't used the same rapid testing technique that's used in Europe," where mad cow has been detected in several additional countries outside the United Kingdom."
Using poor testing methods and refusing to mandate a tracking system of cattle from birth to slaughterhouse to supermarket shelf; almost makes it like sound as though you don't want to find mad cow disease. And if we did find it or any other contaminated meat, we couldn't track where it went to or where it came from.
The procedure for testing cows in America begins when cows are unloaded off the truck. USDA veterinarians are required to test them as they are unloaded. If a sickly or downer cow is spotted by plant employees before USDA officials see the questionable cow "It can be returned on a different truck with instructions from the owner not to mention it to the inspectors ," Schwochert said.
Ann M. Veneman was the Secretary of the USDA in 2003 and she stated after a cow was identified with the disease on December in 2003, she said the case is probably isolated and the US beef supply is safe. "I plan to serve beef for my Christmas dinner," Veneman said, "and we remain confident in the safety of our food supply."
"The American Meat Institute, a trade group in Arlington, Va., representing the U.S. meat and poultry industry, claimed the U.S. beef supply is safe for human consumption."
"First and foremost, the U.S. beef supply is safe," AMI spokesman Dan Murphy told UPI. "We think its safe for U.S. consumers to eat."
Shortly after Veneman made her announcement, Japan and South Korea both banned the importation of American meat.
Ann Veneman resigned as Secretary of the USDA on November 15, 2004.
Japan the largest importer of meat products, banned American beef for two years afterwards. They agreed to lift the ban after they agreed to only accept young US cattle under the age of 21 months. Agricultural safety experts decided young cows were free from mad cow disease.
This January American beef was again banned in Japan after a U.S. meat packing plant shipped banned spinal materials in a batch of meat to Japan.
Japan has not lifted the ban as of today.
I am trying not to over react here junior, but you can't inspect your way out of a paper bag even if you wanted to and the cattlemen's association lobby would pitch a fit if you did. So this latest case of an undisclosed cause for classic Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease is really creepy.
It takes years for Mad Cow disease before any symptoms appear, but I'm warning you junior. The Republican's will not get my vote in November if I begin to display prominent psychiatric/behavioral symptoms; painful dyesthesiasis; and delayed neurologic signs while I am barbecuing a steak this summer!!!!
From: comments@whitehouse.gov
Date: May 19, 2006 1:20:47 AM CDT
To: guzmatom@mac.com
On behalf of President Bush, thank you for your correspondence.
We appreciate hearing your views and welcome your suggestions.
Due to the large volume of e-mail received, the White House is
unable to respond to every message, and therefore this response
is an autoreply.
Thank you again for taking the time to write.