Dear Log,
From the Harper's Weekly Review...
Mad cow disease was discovered in the United States for the first time, in a Holstein cow that was too sick to walk but was nonetheless slaughtered and sold for meat. The mad Holstein's brain and spinal column were sent to a rendering plant somewhere, possibly to be turned into dog or chicken food; there was no word on whether the cow's blood was processed to be fed to young calves as a milk supplement. Secretary of Agriculture Ann Venemen, a former lobbyist for the beef industry, insisted that even meat from a mad cow is safe to eat, and she promised to feed beef to her family for Christmas. Government and other beef industry officials claimed that there were "firewalls" in place to prevent infectious prions from reaching American hamburgers; Dr. Stanley Prusiner, the Nobel laureate who discovered prions, contradicted those claims and explained that he believes the disease is already widespread in the United States. "They treat the disease as if it were an infection that you can contain by quarantining animals on farms," he said. "It's as though my work of the last 20 years did not exist." Ten thousand pounds of beef were recalled in eight states, and about 100 people called hot lines to say they might have eaten some of the meat. President Bush, a spokesman said, "continued to eat beef," and agriculture officials were hoping to blame Canada. British health officials reported the first possible transmission of mad cow disease to a human via blood transfusion, and China reported a new SARS case. A Swedish mother was arrested for trying to bake her five-month-old baby. Frat boys at the University of Georgia killed and ate a rabid raccoon.
