Just caught a glimpse of the late night news. Seems the USA has just reported its first ever case of MAD COW disease... right here in WA. The animal came from Yakima and was processed in Centralia. Funny how they were suspicious enough to have the funny-acting beast tested for the disease, but regardless still had it slaughtered and butchered before the test results were even in.

Looks like a lot more salmon, steelhead, and/or clams gracing Christmas dinnertables this season.

Merry Christmas all!

Yeah ,we were talking about that subject at work today, gonna kill the steak business for a while. But then again, the high beef price are sure to drop.......but what good will that be when nobody eats it.

It will be interesting to say the least, better stock up on fish, that too is way too expensive these days. Really makes running a restaurant tough.

Steve Ng

Have already seen reports that Japan and S Korea will be placing a ban on US beef. Sure to be more countries. Early estimates run in the billions for beef industry loses.

Maybe they ought to check out us fishermen/women.

I suspect we all have "mad steelhead " disease

How else can you explain being outside in pouring down/sideways 40 degree rain, wading up to your butt in water that was snow/ice an hour ago trying to catch maybe one fish all day?

Makes me wonder what all these people who are on the Atkins Diet are going to turn to.
Razor clams?
"The OTHER other white meat"?

diana

Thank goodness i have a freezer full of "free range" venison. Funny how the officials are saying not to worry, the beef is safe, yet when England and Canada had it we placed a ban on thier beef. Hmmm.

It's all merely a conspiracy by the commercials to try and inflate the sorry prices of their gill-netted catch.

Don't buy into the hysteria; cook the bejesus out of the meat and enjoy.

got beef. :p

My Quarter Pounder I had for lunch today tasted just fine!

Man, I hope your significant other doesn't read this board! Too funny.

Good point about the cattle rancher lobbyists. No doubt it's right on, too.

I plan to keep right on with my meat consumption. The disease isn't carried in the muscle meat which is what all of your steak, chops, hamburger etc come from.
Dave, it's not uncommon for them to kill weak and barely standing cows, but I do know that if the cow can't walk off the truck at the packing plant then the meat isn't supposed to go for human consumption.
I think this whole thing is being blowed out of proportion just like the Canada deal last winter. The government was pissed at Canada over lumber and that's why they clobbered them with the closure of Canadian beef to this country.

Probably doesn't make much differance but the cow was from Mabton. 35miles from Yakima. All the reports say we have nothing to worry about unless we eat cow brain. The Duck

AuntyM : I knew you were a woman with a sense of humor. God, I hope you are. Did Caveman think it was fummy? If not tell him I got the joke from Herzog.

Want to read about a real case of MAD COW Disease go to the US Senate's Web Page and look for the Senator from New York's web Page and see how many people she's infected along with Patti Murray.

Just ate a nice steelie
a little bit of good quality Olive Oil and then salt and pepper with a little bit of thyme .

Eats well

I grow a few beef on my 80 acres. I feed them no supplements, no grain, steroids, or anything but the thigh-high subirrigated pasture they are raised on, they come out fat and healthy and sell pretty well to folks who don't want feedlot pot-luck. Over the years I have had a few get sick and croak for one reason or another. I let the coyotes eat them and have never even contemplated a hurry up butcher job - I mean, just the thought of it is pretty disgusting to me. I would have absolutely no problem with legislation prohibiting the slaughter for human consumption of "downer" cows.

By the way, that Mabton mad cow came from Alberta, Canada - yep, the place where the Canadian mad cow was identified that caused the import restriction on Canadian beef. Guess nobody bothered to stop importing Canadian beef on the hoof, eh? Government=Stupid once again

The wife and I very rarely eat beef (after this mad cow thing will no longer eat beef) we eat buffalo that isn't given all the chemicals and crap that store bought beef contains. Though its a little more costly I like it better than beef.

for those of you who haven't heard, not one person has died from mad cow disease here in the US. you would be putting yourself in more danger just by getting behind the wheel and driving to the grocery store.
so go ahead and throw out all the beef in your freezer and lock your doors, the media will tell you when its safe to go outside again

Just another case of over reaction....."Let's make a law."...... Some people spend way too much time listening to Channels 4,5, 7.....the home of super sensationalism. (Can we just have the facts, please?)
I'm not an advocate of eating diseased cattle, but how does that equate to ambulatory? A broken leg certainly doesn't affect meat quality. And I certainly am not an FDA inspector....but I'll just bet they are doing this... .....at least the ones not looking to just make their job easier. The "look good at all cost politicians" are a joke.
No doubt most cattlemen are like Spawnout....when they go down...they're coyote meat. I seriously doubt that anyone drags these downers onto the cattle trucks. It would make no sense to have a downer cow take up as much room as two heathy cows because it needed to sprawl out. Come on.
When one of the cattle go down in the pasture across my field (not my animals) the owner drags the carcass over to the tree line. The first time I saw this done I thought, "Aw Crap! Boy is that going to stink!" Later that same day, the buzzards started arriving and for three or four days there were maybe 20 birds with their wings spread each morning soaking up the early morning sun. Then they left. Never smelled a thing....they picked that thing clean. I was amazed.
ahhhhhh back to fishing

Okay, here are the facts as reported by the U.S. Government. Approximatly 130,000 cows per year that are too sick to stand make it into the U.S. food supply. (I suspect in many cases they were able to stand when loaded into the truck but became too ill to stand before the end of the trip. Often the cattle are hauled long distances.)

Now I admit that 130,000 is small number considering the total amount of old dairy cows slaughtered each year, but its a number that we could easily eliminate, were it not for politicians who STOPPED an attempt to ban the practice last year.

No a just becuse a cow can't stand doesn't mean it is sick, but it sure as hell could be . This one was. Yes, I am for a law that says we don't feed sick cows to the public and another that says we test cows that appear to be sick BEFORE we send the meat off to the public. I do not think that is an over reaction.

Apparently we NEED to tell folks that farmed salmon are fed a natural substance to color their meat, but we don't need to tell consumers, "This old worn out dairy cow was too sick to stand up when we slaughtered it." bon apetite!

MCD = PMS...GOOD ONE...When I first heard the news about the mad cow deal I immediately had a picture in my mind of the sign I threaten to put up at work:

DANGER..COW CROSSING....Now the MAD COW is so perfect I can't stand it. I don't think women generally like to be referred to as COWS though.... Especially the ones with the hyphenated last names....Help me out here AuntyM...Am I right on this? So I bet being referred to as having mad cow disease might be over the line....Ya think?

One more comment.....
I suspect that most don't know that cattlemen are not allowed to give their cattle antibiotics that could cure their "disease".
Good thing we aren't cannibals.....I'd never pass the FDA regs for consumption.

Looks like a few people have a that could never happen to me mentality well I hope it never does happen to you or any of your family. Myself I dont care to be the first in the U.S to be affected by this disease or eat meat with a bunch of chemicals and crap that shouldnt be in it in the first place.

I amazed that there's so little being said about Creutzfeldt Jakob Disease (CJD) and the mad cow variant that infects so many deer and elk IN THE UNITED STATES. Here's a couple of quotes from the BBC story:

".........A farm in the mountains of Nevada may hold a key to the puzzle of Mad Deer disease.

The farm's owner, a cowboy called Jim Koepke, died suddenly from Creutzfeldt Jakob Disease (CJD), an illness very similar to both BSE and the Mad Deer variant.

.....Jim Koepke was the third deer hunter to die in the last two years from CJD.


....But in Colorado, where as many as one in five deer and elk now has the disease, the authorities are urging caution. "

WOW!

That is indeed frightening news CFM. Makes you wonder about farms that feed elk thru the winter... wouldn't that be something if it turned out ground up beef scraps were put into that feed.

Thanks, but I'll stick to fish for now!