While we await word on the retest results from that mildly mad cow, the USDA is lining up its story.
Get ready to learn that mad cows are just a part of life. We all just need to get used to the idea - just like how we're all accustomed to mercury in our fish, salmonella on our chicken and E. coli - read cow shit - in our beef.
Yes, it's another episode in the sitcom that has become the system that oughta be protecting the public from mad cow disease.
Reuters and
AP have stories out this evening quoting folks who acknowledge that the Ag Department thinks the cow they're retesting might have an "atypical" variety of mad cow disease.
I posted on this possibility two nights ago in Smokin' mad cow guns, Part Two.
I got a kick out of this from the AP version:
Some experts have theorized that "atypical" strains can happen spontaneously and not result from eating infected cattle remains, which is the only way the disease is known to spread in cattle.
I wonder if Ahmed Chalabi is one of these "experts." Could the Mighty AP do all of us dumb bovines the favor of naming their experts who say such things?
Reuters puts the "some experts" in their lead, then goes on to name one -- an Ag Department veterinarian who works at the lab where the bovine-testing monkeyshines have been going on. To her credit, the AP reporter picked up the phone and got some reax from a prion scientist who wondered some obvious things like: "If this phenomenon occurs, then why haven't we seen it before?"
What we have here is a smart Ag official talking to gullible reporters writing for a gullible public.
Folks, "atypical" BSE is a new thing - or at least a newly discovered thing. No one knows hardly a thing about it. They don't know where it comes from. They don't know where it goes. They don't know that it's "naturally occurring." THAT'S PLAIN, SIMPLE SPIN.
But here's the story line we're going to be fed: "Yes, this cow had bovine spongiform encephalopathy. But gosh, "some experts" think it might be a naturally occurring variety. And we all know that anything natural is out of our control. And, gee, cows have probably been getting it for years and we didn't even know it. Anybody out there who is afraid of something you can't kill, can't disinfect and perhaps can't even get rid of, don't you know you can die in a car wreck too? Life's got risk. Get used to it! Now, pull up yer chairs, folks. We got some eatin' to do."