Mad Cow USA: The Unfolding Nightmare [Paperback]

Sheldon Rampton (Author), John Stauber (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 1, 2003

The human death toll from British mad cow disease is doubling every three years. A version of mad cow disease unique to the U.S. is killing deer across North America; young hunters are dying from it. Did they get it from U.S. deer? Or from U.S. cattle or pigs that were fed "rendered byproduct" from slaughterhouse waste? With a new chapter of their 1997 book, Rampton and Stauber reveal a terrifying tale of governmental neglect and industry malfeasance.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Mad Cow U.S.A. is not the book to read before you go out for a steak. In fact, it's not really a book to read before eating anything; this chronicle of government cave-in to pressure from the food industry just might scare away your appetite. Authors Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber argue that both the American and British governments colluded with beef producers to suppress important facts about interspecies transmission of bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or "mad cow disease"--facts that might have prevented gruesome deaths. Could a British-style BSE epidemic happen in America? In a 1996 TV talk show, Oprah Winfrey attempted to ask the same question, only to find herself slapped with a lawsuit by a group of Texas cattlemen. Their grounds: the so-called agricultural product disparagement laws currently on the books in 13 states; these laws prohibit people from questioning the safety of any agricultural product, shifting the legal burden of proof from the food industry to its watchdogs. What happens when anyone who speaks out about problems with our food supply can be sued into silence? Rampton and Stauber fear grave consequences for public health, and they make a convincing case against these laws--and, inadvertently, for vegetarianism. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

The epidemic of "mad cow disease" in Britain caused great economic damage, a political crisis, and general panic when it was discovered that humans were apparently acquiring a fatal neurological malady called Creutzfeld-Jacob syndrome from eating the meat of cattle infected by feed containing protein from carcasses of sheep suffering from a disease called scrapie. Richard Rhodes's Deadly Feasts (LJ 3/15/97) provided a lively, sometimes lurid account of how an eccentric scientist named Carleton Gajdusek and others investigating kuru, a disease of New Guinea cannibals, discovered this whole new family of strange, deadly diseases, called transmissible spongiform enchephelopathies, or TSEs. Rampton and Stauber (Toxic Sludge Is Good for You, Common Courage, 1995) cover some of the same ground and more, also in a gripping but better documented way. But the real emphasis here is the conflict between the economic interests of meat industry associations and concerns about potential threats to public health. The authors detail how industry associations and sometimes government agencies have worked to discredit those concerned about public health issues. While the FDA has recently banned the feeding of mammalian tissues to ruminant animals, this is still an important book for its detailed revelations about the dangers of the TSEs and the complex but important issues of balancing economic and political interests and protecting public health. Highly recommended for most collections.?Marit MacArthur, Auraria Lib., Denver
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 300 pages
• Publisher: Common Courage Press; 1st edition (August 1, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1567511104
• ISBN-13: 978-1567511109
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.1 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,747,808 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

40 of 42 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars TSE dangers fairly RENDERED July 14, 2002

By BlueJay54

Format:Hardcover

Like kuru, scrapie and CJD, BSE ("mad cow disease") is a Transmissible Spongiform Encephalopathy (TSE), a fatal neurological disease transmitted by prions. That is, the infectious agent is a defectively folded prion protein, not a living pathogen like a virus or bacteria. It can survive being incinerated, or being buried for years in the ground with only a modest reduction in its disease-causing ability. The epidemiological model for the danger of BSE is kuru, a fatal but otherwise rare neurological disease that was common among New Guinea highlanders back in the 50's and 60's. Kuru reached epidemic proportions due to the practice of human cannibalism, usually of the brain. The regional government finally banned the practice, which (eventually) led to the decline of kuru incidence.

So what's this got to do with hamburgers? "Rendering" is the innocuous term for the practice of grinding up left-over animal organs, tissues, spinal cords etc that are considered unfit for human consumption, then selling it as Meat & Bone Meal (MBM) or Tallow. Agribusinesses use MBM as cattle and pig food and fertilizer (like on vegetables...); tallow has many uses including in the pharmaceuticals and cosmetics industries. Rendering is cow cannibalism, as it were, which is believed to have amplified the incidence of BSE in Britain, just as cannibalism amplified kuru in New Guinea. If you have never heard of rendering then you need to read this book. The British experience of CJD should have been a lesson to US politicians, bureacrats, cattlemen, and the FDA, because the "new variant" of CJD that has killed numerous British persons is actually a prion disease derived from the BSE prion, that is, from cattle. That is, people have died from from eating prion-infected beef.

It is also worth noting that CWD, or Chronic Wasting Disease, is another prion disease currently becoming a major health problem in wild cervids (deer, elk and so on)--and potentially in the people who hunt and eat them. Large, prion-infected deer populations have been reported in several states, including Wisconsin and Colorado. As of today (14 July 2002), Wisconsin opened deer season several months early & intends to keep it open all year, in order to decimate a population of 25,000 prion-infected deer. Guess what? The NBC news report did not mention that CWD is a prion disease related to BSE, probably because they didn't know (& didn't bother finding out). But guess what else? Prions rather easily jump species boundaries: mink to cattle, cattle to human, squirrel to human....Once opened, its a real Pandora's box that sets one's mind to wandering.

[To really be in the know, try a Web search on "cattle rendering" and read what you find. It's enough to make you sick. Cow and pig tissues are widely used in the pharmaceutical industry and in many products intended indirectly for human consumption: hog feed, chicken feed. It is also used in pet food--to think that even my cats might be eating this stuff. There was also a report of a British vegan--a *vegan*, mind you, for a dozen years--who inadvertently got CJD from her pet cat food.]

Despite the flambuoyant title, this is a well-researched and closely reasoned book. It is also well-written and an exciting read. The frightening thing is how unknown these dangers are... This may or may not be the final word on the subject (an update on progress since 1997 would be nice), but it is certainly an eye-opener. If you don't do anything else, read the quote from Nobel laureate Carleton Gadjusek on page 218 (Gadjusek solved the Kuru mystery). In my opinion, the broad public health and policy implications of prion diseases and the practice of rendering make this book a must-read for every informed citizen.

20 of 21 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Don;t get scalped!!!! December 25, 2003

By A Customer

Format:Hardcover

Wow! Judging from the prices of these used copies, the scalpers are out in force now that we have MCD in USA. You can get this book FREE as a download at www.prwatch.org/books/mcusa.pdf .

It is a great book, with a great history of the disease, its epidemiology, and uncovers the truth about the beef industry and their ties to the Dept of Agriculture. Get it!

19 of 20 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Well documented, clear discription of a deadly reality. January 14, 1998

By [e-mail]

Format:Hardcover

When a topic as potentially sensationalistic as "Deadly Disease Being Spread to US Population with Covert US Government Cooperation" needs to be dealt with seriously, it takes responsible journalists to keep hysteria from distorting the facts. Rampton and Stauber have succeeded where others would have failed. The topic of the book is how the meat industry, their public relations firms and the governments of the USA and Britian worked together to attempt to conceal important information about a newly discovered disease that was abroad in the human food system. The truly frightening truth is that Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE, or Mad Cow Disease) is a real thing. It is one disease in a class known as Transmissible Spongiform Encephalopathy that have, until recently, been little researched and little understood. This book does not describe an episode of "The X-Files." People have died from it and are continuing to die from it. The authors documented the entire process of a growing crisis that has potentially world-shattering implications to millions of Americans. Pulling together original source material from obscure (and perhaps at time even hostile) sources they describe how the events unfolded and reason the events unfolded as they did. An important note is that this book is not, and does not pretend to be, a scientific treatment of BSE, TSE's or any other topic. Its approach is more realistic. The authors lay out the occurances as they transpired, uncovering innumerable bits of information that were never before collected together or presented to the general public. The book details the scientific minutae only to the degree it is relevant and stops short of either lecturing or preaching. Explaining who the players have been, their position the entire affair (including the financial risks and implications to the meat industry, the pharmacutical industry and the cosmetic industry) and where they are at the time of printing is a real life detective story whose final chapter has not been written. The only significant frustration I had with the book was the "99%" nature of some of the time oriented information. The footnotes were excellent in identifying th original sources, yet were not always clear as to if the dates were referenced were to indicate when information was released or when the actual experiment / event / discovery occurred. In fairness, I cannot level this criticism with much force, as my scrutiny of the footnotes comes from my intent to develop a fully documented timeline and collection of original source material. That they failed to do my chosen job while undertaking their own agenda can hardly be a cause for blame. As the facts concerning BSE and TSE's continue to unfold it becomes clear that the cricis is far from over. There are still more revelations to come. As more court cases come up based on the Food Disparagement / Veggie Liable Laws, the war rages on. This book give a powerful reference to help understand new events as they unfold over the next several years. Caution in reading this book may be advised, though. The material can be sufficiently frightening in its implications, you may feel the need to make new choices in lfe.