When Albertan wants 15% of their cows killed off, you know it is bad out there:
Alberta Premier Ralph Klein is calling for a massive cull of older cattle to allay the fears of consumers and Canada's trading partners after the discovery of a third case of mad cow disease. The radical move would kill 1.76 million animals born before August 1997, when Canada banned the practice of giving cattle feed that includes the body parts of other cattle.Where would you put all that chuck when it is not heading for a bun?
Comments
Arthur - January 13, 2005 10:51 AM
Where would you put all that chuck when it is not heading for a bun?
I don't know, but I keep thinking of those 2000-ish scenes of burning cattle in England.
blork - January 13, 2005 11:24 AM
The worst part is that there is almost zero chance of getting CJE from eating the muscle tissue of infected cows. You have to eat nerve tissue and stuff like that (which often ends up in ground beef). So that's an awful lot of wasted rib-eye and tenderloin!
alfons - January 13, 2005 11:55 AM
Re England: that was exactly what I was thinking of. See here.
As a refresher go here for some horrible photos.
Alan - January 13, 2005 11:57 AM
I think the Alberta cull is 3 times the UK cattle cull, though many more sheep were killed off in the UK.
Alan - January 13, 2005 3:08 PM
Ralph clarifies. He does not want to burn the potentially diseased cattle - he wants us to eat them!<blockquote class="smalltext">He stressed that he isn't calling for a "mass slaughter" like that in Britain, which killed and burned 175,000 cattle to stop the spread of bovine spongiform encephalopathy in the 1990s. Instead, he urged a "market-driven" response that would see the cattle killed, processed into hamburger and sold to consumers.</blockquote>So the way to avoid the potential human-killing aspect of the cattle herd is to have us eat the potential human-killing aspect of the cattle herd. And Albertans keep voting for the man!
alfons - January 13, 2005 3:46 PM
Both the onslaught because of foot/mouth disease (England 2001) and fowl pest (Holland 2003) resulted in a discussion over here about the wrongs of mass "meat" production. There's something inherently wrong about it: farmers need to bring their products as fast as possible, in huge quantities, to the market. So ofcourse they use use all things possible to meet the requirements of the market. I.e. like keeping a lot of fowl in a few m<sup>2</sup>, which is quite ill-advised with contagious diseases, and feeding cattle with (slaughter) waste.