Jim Webster wrote:
"Gianna Stefani" wrote in message
...

"Howard Neil" wrote in message
...

For instance, in livestock farming UK farmers have to comply with
welfare standards (quite right too) and have to abide by identification
rules (every cow and bull has to have an individual passport so the meat
on your table is traceable back to an individual animal. This ensures a
high quality product but the costs are massive. There are many countries
in the world where animal welfare is virtually non existent (and where
BSE or poultry diseases, for instance, are rampant) and where the
farmers receive very large subsidies from their government. This allows
them to flood our market with sub standard food.

Sorry to intrude but you cannot get away with that one.
It is funny how I recall British farmers (and feed manufacturers) happily
feeding ground up sheep to cattle (even though cattle are vegetarian but

who

cares as long as they get fat quickly) which started off the BSE thing in
the first place.


First done by Germans before the American civil war, standard procedure in
virtually all the world, actually compulsory in the UK during WW1 and WW2
and still done in much of the Americas, the EU is about the only place not
doing it and even here there are discussions about going back to it for pigs
because it is both environmentally sensible recycling and pigs do eat meat



The problem was due to a change in processing standards for bone-meal.
Producers of cattle-feed persuaded the government that the waste meat
products could be safely processed at lower temperatures. Oops!

I believe bone-meal was used to supply essential calcium for dairy
cattle to replace that lost in milk production. Without this calcium the
cattle would suffer from milk fever which, oddly enough, displayed some
symptoms not unlike mad-cow disease.

Not only cattle were fed on these products. Vegetables have been fed on
blood and bone-meal for many years.


--
Graham Davis
Bracknell