Yum Yum part 4

[MORTARDUDE]

FROM: www.mad-cow.org

U.S. Government Researchers Find Mad Deer Disease, Like Mad Cow Disease, Can Infect Normal Human Brains-Public Health and Farming Groups Demand FDA Action To Protect Humans and Animals from Fatal Disease in U.S.

"Washington, D.C.-- Public health advocates are demanding that the Food and Drug Administration close loopholes in animal feed regulations to prevent the spread of U.S. mad cow-type diseases -- now at epidemic levels in Western deer and elk - that might infect people who eat meat. In a letter sent today to the FDA, the Center for Food Safety (CFS), the Humane Farming Association and families of U.S. victims of the human version of mad cow disease, Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD), are demanding new efforts to protect public health and food safety. The FDA was asked to respond to a legal petition filed in January 1999 that would change U.S. animal feed regulations to prevent the spread of U.S. mad cow-type diseases already occurring in deer, elk, sheep and humans, and suspected in pigs and cattle. Under current FDA regulations, animals known to be infected with mad cow-type disease such as deer, elk and sheep, can be legally fed to pigs, chickens and pets, which in turn can be rendered and fed to cows. Billions of pounds of slaughterhouse waste in the form of rendered animal by-products are fed to U.S. livestock every year as fat and protein supplements, despite this practice being the known route of transmission of British mad cow disease. A fatal "mad deer" disease called chronic wasting disease is occurring at epidemic levels in deer and elk in Western states and on game farms, CFS legal director Joseph Mendelson wrote in the letter to the FDA. This may already be claiming human lives as is suggested by the alarming appearance of unusually young victims ofCJD."