Grass-fed cows are not mad cows

12/23/03. The United States has its first suspected case of mad cow disease, technically known as bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or BSE. Tissues from a cow from a Washington State confinement dairy have tested positive for BSE. The leading theory is that cattle contract BSE by being fed meat and bone meal made from other cattle that have been infected with BSE. In essence, herbivores are being turned into cannibals.

This particular dairy cow was a "downer" cow, an industry term for an animal that cannot stand up due to injury or disease. Cows in confinement dairies are fed, bred, and injected with hormones so that they produce large quantities of milk. A significant percentage of them become lame or diseased at an early age, resulting in as many as 200,000 downer cows. At the present time, meat from these animals enters the U.S. food supply.

Choosing products from cattle and dairy cows that have been raised on pasture all of their lives eliminates all possibility of mad cow disease because the animals are never fed anything but pasture grasses, hay, and grass silage (a form of fermented grass.) For the record, the animals are superior to feedlot animals in other ways as well, including the fact that they are not treated with hormones, low-level antibiotics, or other pharmaceutical drugs, and they are never fed "by-product" feedstuff, a long list of ingredients that can include chicken manure, chicken feathers, stale candy, and aerobically digested municipal garbage. Grass-fed cows eat what Nature designed them to eat, insuring their health and yours.