How Now, Mad Cow?

I quit eating meat after Easter 2000. Early that year, I underwent quadruple bypass surgery. I was also concerned about the danger of having a stroke, so I asked my doctor if there was any way to get the plaque out of my arteries. He suggested reading Dr. Dean Ornish's book, Reversing Heart Disease. Dr. Ornish lays it on the line. Your body makes cholesterol out of the meat and fat one eats. Therefore his diet allows for no meat, no dairy. Until that time like most Americans, I was a true believer. I believed that meat, milk and other dairy products were good for a person. I now know that I was very wrong.
Since that time, I've learned there are lots of other reasons not to eat meat or use dairy products. Milk is a subject I have taken up elsewhere. However, the two are linked together because after a cow is no longer able to produce milk, it is sold for meat.
Bovine spongiform encephalopathy, BSE, is the technical name for Mad Cow Disease. It eats holes in the brains of cattle. It sprang up in Britain in 1986 and spread through countries in Europe and Asia, prompting massive destruction of herds and decimating the European beef industry.

A human illness, variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, is related to mad cow disease and doctors believe humans get it from eating meat containing infected tissue. Veneman said the apparently diseased cow was found at a farm in Mabton, Wash., about 40 miles southeast of Yakima. She said the farm has been quarantined.