Its good to be back

[Peter]

Hi everyone-

I've been rather busy lately, but I do have some questions- and some things to say.

1. we recently got a Phaser 350 (tektronix) for $192.89  (including shipping) off ebay- it says it supports Mac & TCP/IP- We have a TCP/IP network here at home (my christmas Present from "Santa"), and I was jst wondering how we put a TCP/IP printer on the network

2. Good news- all of our problems with our network at the mill are solved (upgraded the 6500 to a G3 233 beige box & Word 6.0 to Word 20001)

3. Finding Nemo on a 12 ft. digital projector screen hooked up to a 900 Mhz 14.1" ibook with a 100 watt surround amp is spectacular. (we got it for christams)

4. The Single Mad cow case in Washington state is not a good reason not to eat beef (if there are vegans/vegatarians here, its OK some of my best friends share your beliefs).  Cases of Mad cow disease (and other froms of spongiform encephilea such a scrapie in sheep) can happen randomly in nature, which is likely, considering that the feeding of animal remains has been banned since 1998 (most dairy cows in a 4000 cow factory farm like it was from live at very most 5 years making it very unlikely that it ate any).  Anyway- people in some poverty stricken areas of the world have been eating sheep with scrapie for years with now ill effects on the records.

5. Organic and grass fed beef is still safer!

Moderators- ff this is considered offesive in anyway- please delete it- this i just my opinion based on facts that I have read about.

Merry late christmas to all- and to all a happy New Year

Peter

[jepinto]

Peter:

I can only speak for myself......(but I talk REAL LOUD) but thank you for an "insider's" view on Mad Cow Disease.

One of the joys of this forum is the breadth of knowledge, shared so freely.

Speaking of...do you know why it's called PMS?  Mad Cow Disease was already taken

[Gary S]

Peter,

I had a hamburger at Chile's this afternoon and I feel fine.

We just have to stop scraping off those little itty-bitty pieces off the spinal columns. There be neurons mixed up in there.    

I didn't even know that they did that until I heard it on NPR driving home today.

[Epaminondas]

Organic Consumers Association

[Highmac]

Tell the tourists they are still welcome in Britain.... .

Seriously, I hope it doesn't develop into the problem we had here.

[Peter]

Thanks Epaminodas, but take all of those articles with about a truckload a salt.  several of the articles have titles that are just worng, and others exagerate.

Please- answer my first question, and this new one-

What can I do to share files between a 10.2 and a 9.1 computer?  I found I don't know enough about TCP/IP to do it, and Apple talk says that "the server unexpectadly shut down" (or something like that) As soon as I try to log In

Help!!
Peter

PS our guys at the mill really like having all 4 computers working on OS 9.2 ( the can listen to itunes on all of them now)

[kelly]

Mac OS X: About File Sharing

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=106461

[Paddy]

The solution to the Mad Cow problem (or at least keeping it OUT of the food supply) is relatively simple, as Japan has demonstrated. Test every slaughtered animal. Not just "downer" cows - EVERY one of 'em. It's absurdly cheap insurance, for the 2-3¢ increase per pound in the price of beef. Why our idiot politicians aren't pushing for this to be implemented immediately is a mystery to me. Interesting that Japan, a country which one normally associates with compliance with authority, had a very active consumer's association that successfully pushed the testing of all slaughtered cattle. Britain is adopting the testing in February. The US needs to look no further than the experience of countries who have already had major encounters with Mad Cow. The second, and obvious thing is to completely eliminate any contamination of the animal food supply, by tightening the regulations enacted in Canada and the US in 1997. While the actual threat of Mad Cow is still relatively small in the US, the actual effects of the disease, when it occurs, are devastating. Why fool around?

Expert Warned That Mad Cow Was Imminent

By Sandra Blakeslee — The New York Times — December 25, 2003

Ever since he identified the bizarre brain-destroying proteins that cause mad cow disease, Dr Stanley Prusiner, a neurologist at the University of California at San Francisco, has worried about whether the meat supply in America is safe.

He spoke over the years of the need to increase testing and safety measures. Then in May, a case of mad cow disease appeared in Canada, and he quickly sought a meeting with Ann M. Veneman, the secretary of agriculture. He was rebuffed, he said in an interview yesterday, until he ran into Karl Rove, senior adviser to President Bush.

So 6 weeks ago, Dr Prusiner, who won the 1997 Nobel Prize in Medicine for his work on prions, entered Ms Veneman's office with a message. "I went to tell her that what happened in Canada was going to happen in the United States," Dr Prusiner said. "I told her it was just a matter of time."

The department had been willfully blind to the threat, he said. The only reason mad cow disease had not been found here, he said, is that the department's animal inspection agency was testing too few animals. Once more cows are tested, he added, "we'll be able to understand the magnitude of our problem."

This nation should immediately start testing every cow that shows signs of illness and eventually every single cow upon slaughter, he said he told Ms Veneman. Japan has such a program and is finding the disease in young asymptomatic animals. Fast, accurate and inexpensive tests are available, Dr Prusiner said, including one that he has patented through his university.

Ms Veneman's response (he said she did not share his sense of urgency) left him frustrated. That frustration soared this week after a cow in Washington State was tentatively found to have the disease. If the nation had increased testing and inspections, meat from that cow might never have entered the food chain, he said.

Ms Veneman was not available for interviews yesterday, and the White House referred all questions to the department. A spokeswoman for Ms Veneman, Julie Quick, said: "We have met with many experts in this area, including Dr Prusiner. We welcome as much scientific input and insight as we can get on this very important issue. We want to make sure that our actions are based on the best available science."

In Dr Prusiner's view, Ms Veneman is getting poor scientific advice. "USDA scientists and veterinarians, who grew up learning about viruses, have difficulty comprehending the novel concepts of prion biology," he said. "They treat the disease as if it were an infection that you can contain by quarantining animals on farms. It's as though my work of the last 20 years did not exist."

Scientists have long been fascinated by a group of diseases, called spongiform encephalopathies, that eat away at the brain, causing madness and death. The leading theory was that they were caused by a slow-acting virus. But in 1988, Dr Prusiner proposed a theory that seemed heretical at the time: the infectious agent was simply a type of protein, which he called prions.

Prions (pronounced PREE-ons), he and others went on to establish, are proteins that as a matter of course can misfold — that is, fold themselves into alternative shapes that have lethal properties — and cause a runaway reaction in nervous tissue. As more misfolded proteins accumulate, they kill nerve cells.

Animals that eat infected tissues can contract the disease, setting off an epidemic as animals eat each other via rendered meats. But misfolded proteins can also arise spontaneously in cattle and other animals, Dr Prusiner said. It is not known whether meat from animals with that form of the disease could pass the disease to humans, he said, but it is a risk that greatly worries him. Cattle with sporadic disease are probably entering the food chain in the United States in small numbers, Dr Prusiner and other experts say.

Brain tissue from the newly discovered dairy cow in Washington is now being tested in Britain to see if it matches prion strains that caused the mad cow epidemic there, or if it is a homegrown American sporadic strain, Dr Prusiner said. "The problem is we just don't know the size of the problem," he said. "We don't know the prevalence or incidence of the disease."

The Japanese experience is instructive, Dr Prusiner said. Three and a half years ago, that country identified its first case of mad cow disease. The government then said it would begin testing all cows older than 30 months, as they do in Europe. Older animals presumably have a greater chance of showing the disease, Dr Prusiner said. Japanese consumer groups protested and the government then said it would test every cow upon slaughter, Dr Prusiner said. The Japanese have 4 million cattle and slaughter 1.2 million of them each year. The United States has 100 million cattle and kills 35 million a year.

Early this fall, Japanese surveillance found two new cases of the disease in young animals, aged 21 and 23 months. "Under no testing regime except Japan would these cases ever be found," he said. The 23-month-old cow tested borderline positive using two traditional tests. But the surveillance team then looked in a different part of the brain using an advanced research technique and found a huge signal for infectious material, Dr Prusiner said. It was a different strain of the disease, possibly a sporadic case.

The only way to learn what the United States is facing is to test every animal, Dr Prusiner said. Existing methods, used widely in Europe and Japan, grind up brain stem tissue and use an enzyme to measure amounts of infectious prions. Animals must have lots of bad prions to get a clear diagnosis.

Newer tests, by a variety of companies, are more sensitive, cheaper and faster. Dr Prusiner said that his test could even detect extremely small amounts of infectious prion in very young animals with no symptoms. Sold by InPro Biotechnology in South San Francisco, a single testing operation could process 8,000 samples in 24 hours, he said.

British health officials will start using the test in February, Dr Prusiner said. If adopted in this country, it would raise the price of a pound of meat by 2 to 3 cents, he said. "We want to keep prions out of the mouths of humans," Dr Prusiner said. "We don't know what they might be doing to us."

His laboratory is working on promising treatments for the human form of mad cow disease but preventing its spread is just as important, he said. "Science is capable of finding out how serious the problem is," he said, "but only government can mandate the solutions."

[Mayo]

In my early years I was involved in farming, and what I experienced turned me into a vegan for many years.  If people saw how meat and produce is handled on a typical corporate farm/ranch and in slaughterhouses I think that many would change their eating habits...

Farmers and ranchers move glacially when it comes to changing their attitudes about how they do things.  Lax government oversight  doesn't help.  And always keep in mind that profit drives everything in the USA, including the official agencies charged with protecting the food supply.

While I do eat small amounts of meat these days, it is always from organic producers.  The same goes for produce.  Organic costs more, and eating "in-season" produce can limit one's choices at times.  But you either pay at the front end or the other end, and the latter is typically much more expensive and uncomfortable than the former.

[Peter]

Kelly- Thanks, It Worked

[Epaminondas]

<< Thanks Epaminodas >>

You are welcome.


<< but take all of those articles with about a truckload a salt. several of the articles have titles that are just worng, and others exagerate. >>

Of course, I take all sides in the matter with a grain of salt.  Titles and articles.

Organic industry on one side or government-agribusiness complex on the other.

I am just out to make the best decisions that I can with the information that I have available.

__________________________________________________________________


HOW TO IDENTIFY IF YOUR COW HAS MAD COW DISEASE

The Wall Street Journal: U.S. a little too quick to pat itself on back

UPI: USDA refused to release mad cow records

AP: Authorities begin to recall cow parts used in candles, poultry feed, gardening soil . . .

List of Nations Banning U.S. Beef


Resources:


Dietitian's Guide to Vegetarian Diets: Issues and Applications, Mark Messina, PhD., MS and Virginia Messina, MPH, RD

Obtaining adequate protein on a vegetarian diet is actually quite simple: Diet for a Small Planet (20th Anniversary Edition - 1992 - preferable to earlier editions) by Frances Moore Lappe

Excellent source of vitamin B12 for vegetarians - $3.28/100 -  Freeda Vitamins is well thought of in the vegetarian community - they have been around since 1928.  

Excellent: Vegan & Vegetarian FAQ

Animal Ingredients A to Z

Guide to Food Ingredients

[Mayo]

Here is an article in today's New York Times about the U.S.D.A and its domination by livestock interests...

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/02/opinion/...22230dc44192ef1

Here is an excerpt from the article:

Alisa Harrison has worked tirelessly the last two weeks to
spread the message that bovine spongiform encephalopathy,
or mad cow disease, is not a risk to American consumers. As
spokeswoman for Agriculture Secretary Ann M. Veneman, Ms.
Harrison has helped guide news coverage of the mad cow
crisis, issuing statements, managing press conferences and
reassuring the world that American beef is safe.

For her, it's a familiar message. Before joining the
department, Ms. Harrison was director of public relations
for the National Cattlemen's Beef Association, the beef
industry's largest trade group, where she battled
government food safety efforts, criticized Oprah Winfrey
for raising health questions about American hamburgers, and
sent out press releases with titles like "Mad Cow Disease
Not a Problem in the U.S."

Ms. Harrison may well be a decent and sincere person who
feels she has the public's best interest at heart.
Nonetheless, her effortless transition from the cattlemen's
lobby to the Agriculture Department is a fine symbol of all
that is wrong with America's food safety system. Right now
you'd have a hard time finding a federal agency more
completely dominated by the industry it was created to
regulate. Dale Moore, Ms. Veneman's chief of staff, was
previously the chief lobbyist for the cattlemen's
association. Other veterans of that group have high-ranking
jobs at the department, as do former meat-packing
executives and a former president of the National Pork
Producers Council.

The Agriculture Department has a dual, often contradictory
mandate: to promote the sale of meat on behalf of American
producers and to guarantee that American meat is safe on
behalf of consumers. For too long the emphasis has been on
commerce, at the expense of safety. The safeguards against
mad cow that Ms. Veneman announced on Tuesday - including
the elimination of "downer cattle" (cows that cannot walk)
from the food chain, the removal of high-risk material like
spinal cords from meat processing, the promise to introduce
a system to trace cattle back to the ranch - have long been
demanded by consumer groups. Their belated introduction
seems to have been largely motivated by the desire to have
foreign countries lift restrictions on American beef
imports.