Our recent report on the role of beef in the American diet noted some beef benefits, but that didn't please everyone. Below is a prime example of how some of beef's detractors react to such news but we will not be cowed.
February 11, 2003
As a group of scientists and administrators charged with reporting facts, your consortium should have been more forthright vis-Ã -vis the facts regarding the various health risks associated with the American beef industry and its roll in the American diet.
I might point out, given the fact your review failed to mention any substantive counterpoint, that European health agencies charged with responsibilities similar to those of the FDA and your organization have banned American-raised beef due to some of the reasons you casually mentioned and rapidly dismissed. The fact that the American beef industry exercises its wanton policies of irradiation, steroid treatments, and vaccination programs as methods of maintaining/increasing profit levels is in itself a cause for great concern. Couple that with the fact that they pay insufficient attention to potential long-term effects of such practices and one is left must ask if their methods should be considered professionally irresponsible. Sadly, your failure to scrutinize these policies and practices is not only inexcusable but borders on being morally reprehensible. Alas, I am afraid it calls the very legitimacy of your organization into question.
ACSH is charged with an important role that includes living up to certain explicit (and implicit) responsibilities, the most important of which is to help promote the health and wellbeing of the American consumer. By skirting many of the concerns and findings brought forward by your European counterparts, you do your institution and the greater American public a grave disservice that borders on outright negligence.
Most sincerely,
Johannes Schmidlapp
ACSH replies:
We at the American Council on Science and Health are committed to providing consumers with sound, science-based information on public health issues, including food safety. The fact that European countries choose not to use American products does not necessarily mean their decisions are based on solid evidence about any real health problems related to such products. Mr. Schmidlapp's condemnation of all American beef-producing practices seems more than a little exaggerated and somewhat ill-informed. Irradiation, for example, is not widely used, has been shown to be a safe process, and is not used merely to "inflate profits" but to destroy dangerous microorganisms. We think, based on available scientific evidence, that American beef is a safe, nutritious product. If there is any real evidence to the contrary (and by real evidence I do not mean anecdotal reports), we are open to evaluating it and, if necessary, changing our opinion.
Ruth Kava, Ph.D., R.D.
Director of Nutrition
American Council on Science and Health
February 14, 2003
Dear ACSH,
Again, as the medical field does so well, your agency has taken a "holistic" subject and reduced it to what Americans want to hear and what industry pays big bucks for. Thinking about "beef," the flesh from slaughtered cows and calves, as a single issue is as irresponsible and short-sighted as sending hundreds of bombs onto Iraqi women and children to rid the world of one man.
This nation needs an enema, it is so full of poop. When espousing a direction for the human population, perhaps, like any good doctor, you should consider the entire picture. We can and should get the nutrients in animal products from other sources!
Would people eat dead cows if they had to slaughter them? Would children choose to inflict egregious pain and suffering on helpless animals? And why would we expect them to? If slaughterhouses moved to a place with glass walls in the middle of cities, and people could see, smell, hear the chaos, see the agony what then? Meat is not necessary, required, nor does it have a positive impact on this planet, such as the workers who are imported to be our butchers, nor should we be feeding livestock a disproportionate amount of the grain and water that needs to be directed to the human population.
I suspect the beef industry, in its usual timely fashion, is responding to the responsible shift away from products that require animals to be tortured to death by people who must develop a hate for them to slaughter them all day. There will always be counter-information about nutrition, a political agenda backed by huge corporate donations to representatives from agricultural states.
This nation slaughtered 41 million cows and calves last year. Why? For the little protein actually required in the diet, three to five ounces daily, we can certainly turn to other sources. Just think: osteoporosis would be eliminated, as would cholesterol problems and so much more. I read reports every day from numerous medical journals confirming the fact that animal products are absolutely unnecessary and, conversely, are at the root of many degenerative diseases. The money spent by this industry that seeks to globalize animal factories a re-birth of concentration camps for animals should face the moral fact that they push products that kill. They symbolize death, violence, animal abuse, and a moral decline in responsible capitalism. How tragic that your agency has chosen to promote a product that causes such suffering. The end will never justify the means.
This nation should begin to eat more raw foods, plant foods, and stop making our bodies the graves of slaughtered beasts.
It is too bad that people have to fight so hard to do the right thing while responsible nutrition is undermined by information that keeps us from evolving into a healthier, more humane society. Physical and mental health will only recover when we stop executing animals by the billions for food that clogs our hearts and minds. Someday, when they dig us up, epidemiological studies will confirm that animal products caused every disease we get here in the West.
Why do we try to raise healthy children but inflict abhorrent acts of savagery upon helpless creatures and make children ill? Food irradiation? Genetically altered foods? Insane. The shift to vegan eating is righteous and responsible. It does what religion preaches but does not practice. It eliminates the need for killing, pain, and the requirement that someone else be a killer of animals to fill a demand created by desire rather than necessity. There are entire states drowning in manure from waste lagoons, breathing particulate matter from factory farms, and suffocating from ammonia and other noxious fumes from animal agriculture. Move to Utah near the Circle 4 Farm, or to Iowa or North Carolina. The people there are sickened by the environmental damage that these factories cause. Look at the animal abuses rampant that are being ignored for cost efficiency. It is not worth the mouthful of flesh.
Respectfully,
Laura Aaron Slitt
Bartlett, NH
February 17, 2003
I am a thirty-six-year-old female Desert Storm veteran. I have multiple sclerosis, severe enough that I am now in a wheelchair. I spent four years in the UK, right during the beginnings of the BSE (mad cow) scare. People are quick to assume. As a friend of mine states, "People in general like to be excited, even by things that do not hold up to examination." I have found this to be very true.
When persons find out that I have MS and am a GW vet, they quickly assume that I was exposed to chemicals and/or chemical warfare (I was not and no one has found evidence supporting such exposure). Some tell me of the dangers of aspartame, and that I shouldn't have "poisoned" myself by drinking diet cola while deployed (I drank none and aspartame has been proven both safe and stable chemically). Still others warn me of the dangers lurking in the amalgam fillings in my mouth displaying and refusing to learn basic tenets of chemistry (after all, I do not explode in a ball of flames after consuming a glass of water).
The number of persons suggesting that MS must be a prional disease that I developed after consuming British beef is stunning even more so when you realize that they don't even know what a prion is! (By the way, MS lacks all characteristics of prional diseases.) Persons like Dr. Mercola insist that grain-fed beef is a dietary and chemical disaster and, of course, offer ridiculous alternatives, such as grass-fed beef instead. (This makes little sense. The same nutrients and alleged "poisons" that would pass into grain would also pass into grass and into the beef, thereby negating the claimed "advantage".) Aajonus, a raw food advocate, claims he consumes his meat raw and so should anyone with MS, especially raw liver. (This is patently ridiculous, unproven, and flat-out dangerous. Hasn't he ever heard of parasites? Chemically, there is no difference between a molecule of cooked meat and a molecule of raw meat. Besides, how appetizing is a plate of raw liver?) Speaking of parasites, anyone heard of Hulda Clark? She claims that liver flukes in the brain cause MS. According to a parasitologist I spoke with, liver flukes cannot survive in brain tissue. Again, unproven and unfounded claims!
Dr. Mercola and Hulda Clark are both facing lawsuits at this time for their claims. Aajonus, better watch out!
Particularly deserving of commendation is ACSH's respect for the scientific method. This is vital because so many people assume that what they hear or read is true. They don't question anything except what is provable! Is it silliness, ignorance, paranoia, or dare I say it stupidity? (According to the same friend quoted above, beef consumption every few weeks boosts "happiness chemicals" within the brain. That is both a provable and repeatable statement.)
Thank you for providing a valuable service and forum for science and education. By the way, I am not a scientist and only have a high school diploma and an associate's degree in Communications Technology from the Air Force Community College. I encourage everyone and anyone to question claims, read any research quoted (abstracts are fairly easy to understand and give the gist of the article), and either learn some science or trust the scientists. When you have a headache, you likely take an aspirin. When you have cancer, hopefully you see a doctor. There are books available to teach what you don't know or remember, or what you didn't understand to begin with. The Dummies and Idiots series are excellent, as is Barron's.
I tell everyone I know to trust a bit more in science. After all, look how it benefits us!
Now I'm going to eat a steak. Pass the steak sauce!
Tracy M. Berkland
Euclid, OH
P.S. Eat, drink and be merry, for after we are born, we all die. Enjoy the ride!