I wonder if anyone out there is looking at the bigger picture surrounding mad cow disease, apart from those of us who already follow vegan or vegetarian guidelines. So far, the reaction has been limited to calls for regulatory changes from officials within the Department of Agriculture. While new proposals, including the expansion of livestock testing, are a step in the right direction, these ideas still overlook the roots of the problem, which grow out of the factory farming system itself.
Citizens should be alarmed because our system produces so many downed cows in the first place. Seattle P-I columnist Mark Trahant makes this point in a recent column where he writes, “So what are we not talking about here? The very way we raise cows (and other animals).” Trahant explains that Europe’s mad-cow epidemic not only encouraged consumers to question industry regulations but also caused some nations to aggressively pursue organic farming. Europeans asked why it is acceptable for people to feed animal byproducts to vegetarian animals—do you really want to eat a chicken that’s been eating cattle?
Eating certified organics, or abstaining from meat altogether, strikes at the heart of the mad-cow problem, which is less about faulty regulations than it is about the inhumane road animal products travel on the way to our tables.
We stuff livestock full of antibiotics because they are raised in cramped, unnatural conditions that make them weaker and prone to disease outbreaks. The factory farm industry breeds animals to gigantic sizes that their frames cannot support—those pardoned Thanksgiving turkeys are so bloated that they typically die within weeks of being “saved” by our presidents. Pigs often live on easily cleaned slatted floors that can damage their feet severely—but it’s OK, because they’ll die before the deformities become crippling.
Mad-cow is symptomatic of the factory farm problems. But whether or not Americans decide to address the full scope of the problem remains uncertain.
As of Monday, here's the latest related Seattle Times article .
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