Saturday, November 25, 2006
Mad Cow Addendum
OK, I kind of lost the cheeseburger craving when I got to the part in the book that started talking about suspiciously mad cow-like deaths in exactly the area I used to live in, which seem to be traceable back to a period overlapping with the time that I lived there. I think I only ate at the place they're pointing the finger at once, though, and that was almost certainly a different batch of food, and I'm pretty sure I had chicken, anyway. Still, man, that's never a good context in which to suddenly encounter a mention of your old home town...
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Ok you book link didn't work it took me to my Amazon home page, what home town and what hamburger place :) Since ... you know I'm from your home town!
ReplyDeleteSorry about that! I've fixed the book link now, both here and in the previous post where I mentioned it.
ReplyDeleteAnd it wasn't a burger place, it was Garden State Park. Sometime between 1988 and 1992. Um... eep. :)
I did a bit of googling on this, by the way, and found a report from the CDC which seems to conclude that the apparent link with the racetrack is within the realm of coincidence. Apparently the families of the victims are skeptical and suspect the government is doing a bit of a cover-up. Which I would call paranoid, except that that's kind of what the British government did... So who knows?
I wouldn't actually worry, btw, even if you ate at the racetrack restaurant a lot, which I don't ever remember you doing while I was there. But it is still kind of a creepy thing to come across...
Well I did visit the racetrack many times after I turned 18!!!!!!With either Mom or my friends(we decided it was kind of cool). And anyway I turned 18 in 1992!!!!!!!!!!!! And I definately had a hamburger. It explains a lot you know :) But then again millions of people probably did too. Now was this at the concession or in the restaurant or no different. You went to the prom there :) And I ate at the concession stand while enjoying the races.
ReplyDeleteI think it was at the restaurant. And, yeah, "millions of people did, too" was pretty much the CDC's response, apparently.
ReplyDeleteBy the way, I still have the menu from the prom, along with a bunch of other high school crap, so I dug it up and looked. Apparently there was roast beef at the buffet. Heh. Holes in my brain certainly would explain a lot. ;)
You are scaring me. Got your cel #
ReplyDeleteSorry. :) And good.
ReplyDeleteAnd, by the way, you appear to now be called "y" for some reason...
The Cattle and Meat Packing Lobby carry a lot of weight in our respective countries - expect cover ups. I knew a nurse at Vancouver General who had to deal with a patient with vCJD (the version humans get from eating BSE ridden meat) and the tales she told scared the crap out of me. That was in 1999 and their have still been no reports of "homegrown" vCJD cases reported in the media. The man had never been to the UK, btw.
ReplyDeleteWhen I eat beef, I still get an image in my head that I am playing some strange version of Russian Roulette.
What gets me is that the same organizations -- in both the UK and the US, I believe -- are tasked with both certifying the safety of meat and protecting the commercial interests of the meat industries... It's a fundamental conflict of interest, so, yeah, it's not too suprising that stuff like this gets handled badly.
ReplyDeleteAs I understand it -- or at least as the guy who wrote the book made it sound -- it can be really difficult to tell vCJD obtained from eating contaminated food from similar conditions that may be genetic or just random, so it's really hard to know whether to be worried, and if so, how worried.
Mind you, even in Britain at the worst point, there were only, I think, a few hundred cases... Which isn't exactly a good thing, but means that the odds of you or I ingesting a fatal hamburger are really very low. So I continue to enjoy my cheeseburgers, confident that they're at least safer than driving on the highway. Then again, really, most things are.
Geez, both the junior and senior proms were held there, and roast beef was on the menu both years. Does BSE have a long latency period? Signed, your prom date.
ReplyDeleteIt, er, can, yes, but from what I read it seems like there haven't been any cases since about 2001 -- and there were only seven of them, anyway, out of all the thousands of people who ate there -- so I think we probably managed to safely dodge the beef bullet. :)
ReplyDeleteAh now I know who Captain Chlorophyll is. I suspected as much!
ReplyDeleteUh-oh, your secret identity's out, Captain! :)
ReplyDeleteIt's only fair. I've known for years who Kathy is.
ReplyDeleteMe too.
ReplyDeleteKathy, of course I`ve known you for years, but the Good Captain gave himself away. Gothcha.
ReplyDeleteMaximum V. See you tomorrow
ReplyDeletehehehe I really actually kind of already knew based prior posts.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, Betty doesn't like to claim me as her sister :P
That's a total lie! Although if you're going to be like that I might consider changing my mind. ;)
ReplyDelete