The following was previously published on the Suite It has been slightly modified.
How much do you know about the food you eat? I keep returning to this question because the more I find out, through my weekly surfing expeditions to develop material for the articles, the more I realize the potential dangers that lurk within our food production system. This week, I want to return your attention to mad cow disease. In previous articles, I have talked about the importance of food labelling and how important it is to know what you are eating. If we think about how mad cow disease may be spread then this becomes an even more crucial consideration.
If cattle can become infected because they were fed with food that was infected, then we need to know what food the cow we are barbequing was feed so that we can make a choice and decide for ourselves whether or not we want to take the risk that supper can kill or seriously harm us. My previous articles have focused on the issue of our right to know what it is we consume. After all we eat for both pleasure and nutrition. The only pain we should anticipate is from overindulgence and not from the nature of the food itself.
Mad cow disease presents a possible serious threat to people and we need to take every precaution to guarantee that our food will not infect us. This disease may also pose a problem for vegetarians unless they can guarantee that there are no meat byproducts in anything they consume. This possibility just may offer a compelling reason to embrace veganism and reject any and all animal products.
While you are not going to get this disease from that slice of roast beef, the sausage you had for breakfast or the lunch meat at noon, could be another story. We seem to know very little about what we consume and even less about what we eat, eats. Do you know what the turkey you ate yesterday had for lunch?
Legislation needs to be developed that clearly indicates the exact contents of the food we consume and how it was raised. If you have a few bucks it may be quite simple to get a meal but how safe is the meal that you get? We need to make this a priority and insist on our right to know. Take a few minutes and let me know what you think in the discussion forum accompanying this article.
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