RE: Mad Cow Disease: What Causes It?
I'm a bit late to the party as usual!
A couple days ago I was reading the passage below from the book How not to Die, from Michael Greger, who is a vegan who scientifically backs his veganism:
Humanity’s dominion over animals has unleashed a veritable Pandora’s ark of infectious diseases. Most modern human infectious diseases were unknown before domestication led to a mass spillover of animal disease into human populations.6 For example, tuberculosis appears to have been originally acquired through the domestication of goats7 but now infects nearly one-third of humanity.8 Meanwhile, measles9 and smallpox10 may have arisen from mutant cattle viruses. We domesticated pigs and got whooping cough, we domesticated chickens and got typhoid fever, and we domesticated ducks and got influenza.11 Leprosy may have come from water buffalo and the cold virus from horses.12 How often did wild horses have the opportunity to sneeze into humans’ faces until they were broken and bridled? Before then, the common cold was presumably common only to them.
The numbers are all citations, and I can give them to you if you want.
Given that we got mad cow from cows, your post gives further support to the claim in the passage, and it becomes even more alarming: just abstaining from brains might not do the trick!
I will find all of that fascinating reading. However, I have tried to stop eating meat on ethical grounds, also. Unfortunately, I have some dietary limitations and can't handle much fiber so protein (non-dairy) is kind of a default diet. I try to eat mostly fish. At least fish are also predators and so they just become part of the food chain. I'm going to wait to upvote the comment until my VP is somewhat replenished. The hardest part about Steemit for me is the limited VP. Not very good at budgeting money, or votes :)
Yeah, I agree with you about the ethics. Ideally we wouldn't eat anything that can conceivably feel pain. I'm a bit lacking in that respect.
I liked your 'fish are also predators' idea, never thought of it like that. Those fish deserve to be eaten! :P
I too am milk-intolerant, but I seem to tolerate yogurt and cheeses fine, though I'm now following an elimination diet to try to make sure dairy is not harmful to me. I suspect I might have a gluten sensitivity. Well, something is bothering me but I don't yet know what.
Too bad about fiber, it's supposed to be good for the gut.
Yogurt is great...plain, fat-free yogurt a staple in my diet. When you think about it, we really weren't designed to be gluten eaters, were we? Isn't that a legacy of the Neolithic Revolution?
Poor fish. 🐬 I guess we can create a rationale for doing what we have to 😎
Fat-free = taste-free 😞