Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
Mad cow disease 1985
Mad cow disease 1985
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Recommended: Mad cow disease 1985
Mad cow disease and how it affected Canada
Mad cow disease, also knows as BSE (Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy) is an transferable disease which slowly attacks the brain and nervous system of cattle. There isn’t any cure for the disease. The first case of BSE in Canada was a cow that had been imported from the United Kingdom in 1987 at the age of six months. The animal was destroyed upon the discovery of the disease and the Canadian government banned imports from the United Kingdom. This report relates to unit 4 in terms of the economic and industrial overview of the disease in Canada. This report is on the second discovery of mad cow disease in Canada and how it affected Canada economy and Alberta’s beef industry.
Alberta is Canada’s largest
“U.S. Meat Production,” PSR, Physicians for Social Responsibility, Washington, D.C. 2014. Print. Web 1 Apr. 2014.
...in the market. Diversified mid-sized family farms used to produce most of our meat, but now, only a few companies control the livestock industry. This has resulted in driving family farmers out of the market and replacing them with massive confined feeding operations that subject the animals to terrible living conditions that subject our food to contamination. Major food corporations are only concerned with minimizing overhead in order to deliver the consumer cheap food, regardless of the health implications.
Mad Cow Disease, scientifically referred to as (BSE) Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy, is a disease that affects those humans who eat the meat from infected cows. Mad Cow Disease is one of several fatal brain diseases called (TSE) Transmissible Spongiform Encephalopathy. (USDA) There was evidence of a new illness resembling the sheep disease scrapie. It was technically named BSE but quickly acquired the mad cow tag because of the way infected cattle behave. (CNN) In 1997, there was an award given to Stanley Prusiner, for concluding that a distorted protein called a prion was responsible for Mad Cow Disease, noted the long incubation period made it difficult to distinguish (Bryant). Another name for Mad Cow Disease is the new variant Cruetzfeldt-Jakob Disease (vCJD), similar to the Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease, which is a deadly brain illness that strikes about one per million per year (USDA) due to genetic or unknown causes while the vCJD is contracted from eating infected cows (USDA). Both CJD and vCJD are so similarly named because of the similar effects from the illness.
CETA as a trade pact benefits certain Canadian industry’s sectors. One of them is the Food industry which yearly will gain over 1, 5 billion dollars from export to Europe (Ryan, 2014, p. 24-26). European Union will allow Canadian beef to enter the Union without any tariffs (Kimantas, 2014, p.11). It is expected more than 35, 000 tonnes to be exported, thus increasing the initial amount of beef that is originally produced in Canada (Kimantas, 2014, p.11). In addition, the Canada’s Hilton quota, that means a limited amount of beef, can be increased; therefore the amount of beef that have chemicals or contains GMO imported in European Union also will be increased, although many European environmentalists are against such change (Kerr, 2011, p.667). Pork producers will also ...
Mad cow disease is caused by prions, "weird mutant proteins that are found in brain and spinal tissue"1. Another name for mad cow disease is called bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) and the definition is "a progressive neurological disorder of cattle that results from infection by an unusual transmissible agent called a prion"2. It started from what is called a prion protein then it turned into a pathogenic, and then it starts to damaged the brain of a cattle. There's another name for this disease and it's called Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease "a form of progressive dementia characterized by loss of nerve cells and degeneration of nerve cell membranes leading to the production of small holes in the brain. It is rare, degenerative, and invariably fatal"3. This disease happen in human causing lapses in the memory, mood swings similar to depression, lack of interest and social withdrawal3. It is said that this disease has no tr...
Factory farming began in the 1920s soon after the discovery of vitamins A and D. Shirley Leung said, when these vitamins are added to feed, animals no longer require exercise and sunlight for growth (B2). This allowed large numbers of animals to be raised indoors year-round. The greatest problem that was faced in raising these animals indoors was the spread of disease, which was fought against in the 1940s with the development of antibiotics. Farmers found they could increase productivity and reduce the operating costs by using machines and assembly-line techniques. Unfortunately, this trend of mass production has resulted in incredible pain and suffering for the animals. Animals today raised on factory farms have had their genes manipulated and pumped full of antibiotics, hormones, and other chemicals to encourage high productivity. In the fast food industry, animals are not considered animals at all; “they are food producing machines” (BBC). They are confined to small cages with metal bars, ammonia-filled air and artificial lighting or no lighting at all. They are subjected to horrible mutilations: beak searing, tail docking, ear cutting and castration. The worst thing is that ...
From a financial and marketing standpoint, the effects have been catastrophic. In some areas, milk production has decreased by an average of two liters daily and calving index (efficiency at which new calves are produced) went down by an average of twenty days (Davies NP). Th...
In Canada, however, there have been 19 cases of mad-cow disease. This differs considerably from that of the United States. The interesting thing about all of the disease is that the first case of mad-cow disease was imported. The first case of mad-cow disease in Canada was from a cow imported from the United Kingdom. Then, the first case of mad-cow disease in the United States was from a cow imported from Canada.
Following through with this fodder transmission theory, the British government introduced compulsory destruction of suspect animals and their carcasses beginning in 1988. The feeding of animal tissue to cows was banned in Britain in July 1988 and since mid-1992, monitors working for the United Kingdom Ministry of Agriculture have recorded a persistent decline in the number of confirmed cases. It is estimated that the program will eradicate BSE in Britain by the end of 1999.
If you had to choose between having Mad Cow Disease or becoming the top scientist in your field, which would you choose? The answer is obvious. Most realize that Mad Cow Disease, i.e. Bovine spongiform encephalopathy, is a fatal disease that has been present among cattle populations in Europe over the past couple decades. In BSE, brain cells begin to die, forming sponge-like holes in the cow’s brain tissue. Evidence shows that consumption of infected cattle could correspond with the contraction of Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (CJD), a similar disease in humans. Although few people have been diagnosed with CJD worldwide, they remain fearful of showing symptoms of CJD; commonly resulting in death within a year. For this reason, many Americans panicked when becoming aware that the first case of BSE was discovered in the United States in December of 2003. Unfortunately, the media is quick to show infected cows, distempered and shaking in their stalls, without giving sufficient information of the disease’s origin or the preventative measures being taken to halt its spreading. Before consumers restrict beef intake from their diets they should consider their risks. In America, chances of developing BSE is far slimmer than becoming infected with other food-borne illnesses. Although many Americans were recently startled by a reported case of Mad Cow Disease in the United States, they are assured protection from infection by: consumption of selected meats, closely guarded packaging plants, and regulation in beef imports.
Meatpacking has become the most dangerous job in America. Unlike poultry plants, in which almost all tasks are performed by machines, most of the work in a slaughterhouse is done by hand. Hazards of the job include injuries from the various machines and knives, strain to the body from poor working conditions, and even methamphetamine use in order to keep up with the production line. Women face the added threat of sexual harassment. This chapter opens with an anecdote about the largest recall of food in the nation’s history. In 1997 approximately 35 million pounds of ground beef was recalled by Hudson Foods because a strain of E Coli was found in the food. However, by the time the beef was recalled, 25 million pounds had already been eaten. Schlosser notes that the nature of food poisoning is changing. Prior to the rise of large meatpacking plants, people would become ill from bad food in small, localized arenas. Now, because meat is distributed all over the nation, an outbreak of food poisoning in one town may indicate nation-wide epidemic. Every day in the United States, 200, 000 people are sickened by a food borne
keep on doing so, your best way to protect your self if to know where
At the time of the case, the beef industry was in a state of decline. Increasing consumer sentiment towards the negative health effects of red meat timed with increasing inventories of product supplied from Canada and Mexico as a result of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) had caused prices in the consumer market to plummet. (Mohr, 1999) As a result, ranchers were seeing that their finished product was commanding lesser dollar values while their inputs of feed and medication was remaining the same or rising.
Cows are naturally very gentle and calm creatures. These smart and sweet natured animals have been known to go to great lengths to escape slaughterhouses. More than forty-one million of these sensitive animals suffer and die a painful death each year in the United States. When cows are still very young they are burned with hot irons, there testicles are torn or cut off, all without painkillers. Most beef cattle are born in one state, live in another, and are slaughtered in another. The cows who survive the gruesome transportation process are shot in the head with a bolt gun, hung upside down by there legs, and taken onto the killing floor where there throats
America focuses heavily on its livestock and crops earning us a major role in global trade as a farming nation. Unfortunately this has led to some poor choices in treatment of our animals. Many farmers who believe in animal rights say that it started back when farmers only tended to fewer animals, “Ownership of farm animals became concentrated in fewer hands, and flocks and herds grew larger. As a result, the individuality of animals was lost to their owners and they began receding from most people's everyday life” (Namit 29). When people lost their connection to the animals that provided their food, the quality of the animal's lives began to dramatically decrease. Consumers constantly pushed farmers to their limits with high quotas. To keep up with demands agriculturalists turned to some unorthodox practices to keep costs low and still maintain their annual quotas; “To raise efficiency and cut costs, farm animals began to be engineered for abnormally rapid weight gain, fed unnatu...