Loooved this, Morgan! You have such a great way of telling a story and giving us all the info while not making it feel overwhelming. Awesome job! I hope you do many more of these in the future because you are SO good at it!
This was a very well researched video. You hit the nail on the head. Mad Cow, or Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease as it’s called in humans, is terrible. My grandfather died from it, so my family was watching this whole thing really closely.
@@saraschneider6781 I'm not a huge fan of them but if you haven't heard of the susan monica or robert pickton cases i saw a few great documentarys here on youtube about those. don't remember the channel probably whatever one is most viewed
We had a mad cow disease, outbreak here in the UK. They literally went through the herds of cattle which were considered the source of it and slaughtered hole hurts. Literally in some areas you could see burning pile is a cattle for miles away. As a result now you can buy a packet of beef at the supermarket and you can trace it back to the cow who gave birth to it. A lot of farmers paid a very high price for feeding on natural sources of protein to the cattle. Hence why standards have been tightened up like hell over here at the moment it means if we have another outbreak they can trace it back to the source and not have to kill every cow in the county. Mad cow disease is a lose lose situation for everyone concerned for both humans and the livestock. As for the US beef industries use of feedlots. It strikes me as completely bonkers. I can understand having a couple thousand head of cattle and literally moving them slowly across an area of pasture for a number of days and stripping them off to slaughter after that. But keep them all banged up together in such a close proximity to strike me as a good chance of disease outbreaks Morgan is not being a hippy by feeding his cattle. Hey, grass with the odd alfalfa cubes. He just doesn’t want to have somebody die of mad cow disease, because of a cow he has raised. The United States needs to get his act together and tighten up what you can feed livestock
I’m a city kid so it would be good to verify the following - if cows are fed grass for the last two weeks before slaughter they will clear E. coli and their meat will be safer to eat , is this in fact true? I heard this after a horrible situation where a kid died from eating and undercooked hamburger and I remember thinking “Well, if they know the solution, why aren’t all cows grass fed for their last two weeks?” I certainly didn’t understand about how feed lots work etc
Our parents are cattle farmers. I respect them. They love the cows and still work hard in their older age. We own a small dairy goat farm down the road from them. We help out and buy beef from them. I will always support hard working local farmers. Hoping to find a local farmer to trade me some pork in exchange for goat soap, milk, Carmel, cheese, the works. I also am 100% grass feeding my herd and giving hay over winter. Diet is key to a healthy herd. My goats are very healthy with good pasture and hay. Blessings!
Bless you for your comment. With so much bad in this world I always luv when the good stand up and proclaim the dedication to provide the world with good healthy food and respect. ☮
Same with our goats. They eat what they are supposed to from our land with winter v being supplemented with alfalfa and rice bran (they love love love rice bran)
The laws from the 90's and earlier about censorship are the same laws used today to silence any dissenting scientific opinions about a particular recently controversial vaccine (i.e. I can't even post the name of the virus or it will be flagged or deleted on this website)…but since it promotes the gov's position now and the media/big tech backs it blindly, it's ok to silence the critics or people with dissenting scientific opinions. Where is the ACLU and these others you referred to that should be defending the same free speech now?!?! Also loved how you managed to claim the lawsuit was about race to discredit it instead of being honest and saying there were racist people using the lawsuit to promote their hate. While I think the law is wrong it wasn't racist, it was business using the laws on the books to protect their industry. Focus on the politicians that created the laws not the people that simply use the laws to their advantage or you may end up at the low end of the stick when someone sues you for something stupid...
I remember this trial very clearly. I eat beef, but the thought of what the cows had been fed, made us lay off for a while. Now, I live in rural WV, One of our neighbors has chickens and the eggs are so good. Another friend had goats. Grazed right in the back yard. The milk was excellent and even though I am lactose intolerant, I had no problem drinking it. Another neighbor has cattle, all grass fed. The beef is very good. How an animal is raised, fed, and cared for makes a huge difference. Thank you for this video, Morgan.
That is crazy!!! I am so glad you made this video. I remember the trial really well. It was hard to see cattle treated the way they did in feedlots. The urine ponds were already being talked about due to the real possibility of them failing and the region being negatively impacted by the waste. I dislike that industry but really disliked the panic driven reaction Oprah had. But the revelation of what was fed yo cattle, yikes! So I was glued to your whole video. I'd never heard of the Streisand effect. Thx for the bit on that. I have a new term in my vocabulary notebook. "The Dr Philification of America." Made me laugh. I recalled he'd been hired by her. Anything, or anyone Oprah liked, turned to gold. But boy, was I ever glad when the circus was over.
Awesome story/reporting, love this format and enjoy the information. I was in Europe in 96 and remember how big a deal it was there. We were staying in Sweden mostly and reindeer meat is/was readily available, much easer to get than beef at the time because of the mad cow issue.
Morgan, I can see the hard work oozing from you with every new video, the quality and craftmanship is outstanding nowadays from when I first started watching you build crappy fences. Started out here when toby was just a puppy and it has seriously paid off, It's always the first thing that shows up for me when you have a new upload because it's a instant click for me 100% of the time. You are such an inspiration for anyone who just wants to get out there and do something meaningful with their lives, at least for me. Keep on keeping on!!
So, that's how the whole thing started, and Dr. Phil's career was launched. Thanx, Morgan, for connecting the dots for us. Great to see the new barn is coming along nicely. And of course, all the animals at GSF, especially the scene-stealing barn cats.
Morgan, you are such an outstanding story teller, it is pure joy to follow you unfold the plot interspersing it with funny asides. That's awesome! And now I've got to go and google Dr. Phil .......
I am a meat eater but as an American, under the category industries that scare me most from a monopoly standpoint, the meat producers are top 3. Their power to write their own laws is dumbfounding.
Great deep dive into this subject! And I love the way you told the story throughout the rhythms of your day. Especially like the Fred Rogers moment when you enter your office. ❤😂🎉
Thank you Morgan for sharing this information bit of history. I definitely need to get serious about investigating what we eat, not just meat but all food. I started watching your channel when you just had ducks, geese and a few chickens. Morgan you are looking great. You look healthy fit and happy. The farm life suits you. I do miss you saying all ducks go to bed. ❤
Great story to tell. I go back to the late 1970s in my interest and belief in organic and what would come to be called regenerative agriculture as necessary to save our own species. The very first Earth Day was when I was in 8th grade and I was all about it. So, "weirdo" and "kook" are insults I came to embrace as sobriquets, as you can well imagine. Only I wasn't a hippie so much as a punk, which I came to see as actually an outgrowth of hippie, and I'm good with that too.
I remember that trial well. Oprah was right about food safety. She never said America should never eat beef. She wanted America to be aware of how our food is grown and processed. Dr. Phil got his start from Oprahs trual.
Wow, I didn't expect such an informative and well-researched story from this type of channel. Thanks for the education and hope you continue these types of stories in the future!
I'm of the hippie era, so was already wavering about eating meat. When this Oprah lawsuit came out, it was the final push for me, and I went meatless. Thanks for the great informative video, which filled in some blanks for me! OK, gotta go now. Have to go make a hamburg. (I almost 70 now, and have forgotten why I stopped eating beef! UGH!)
Dr. Phil was indeed the worst thing that came out of that trial. His philosophy about and treatment of addicts is appalling. He definitely is angry at his father for his alcoholism and takes it out on every addict he encounters. He doesn’t understand addiction at all.
Yes, the ‘good doctor’ is so far removed from the realities of addiction. He thinks it’s all about will power. He’s an old school dope. Too bad, cuz he could do a lot of good if he was willing to learn. Waste of space there.
It seems so weird given what he had been hired to do, which wasn't to "Dr. Phil" at all but to be Oprah's jury address coach. I could see a legitimate line of legal or paralegal business springing from that. Well she may have been carried too far away by euphoria over the trial outcome to be sensible about Dr. Phil's medical advice. You're right, what a pity, and a bad scientist too.
When you do drugs and choose to drink often and a lot, you know pretty much what the outcome is going to be. Addiction affects everyone in your family and your circle of friends - but you don't care. If you choose to do drugs and/or alcohol, you have no one to blame but yourself.
@@retired5218 Obviously you know nothing about addiction either. Hope you don’t have any friends or relatives who struggle with addiction because they would get no empathy or support from you. Did you know a large number of addicts have suffered abuse, neglect or even rape and have PTSD? Since there is no actual cure for PTSD it is not uncommon to turn to alcohol or drugs to dull the pain. There is also a genetic component to addiction that can’t be overcome with sheer will power. All of those things contribute to the huge failure rate of AA and Narc-anon. You would be enlightened if you ever learned anything about addiction. You might start with not being so judgemental.
The same thing is going on in the milk producing industry. Im 71 and was raised on a dairy farm. I remember when my dad pointed out a red barn in Logan Utah that was owned by Utah State University and said that they were experimenting with shooting cows up with hormones so they'd produce more milk. My brother took over the farm. He sold the cows a couple of years ago to retire and the farm that bought them is a mega milk producing farm where they put the cows on some kind of big carousel to milk them that is totally automated. My dad and brother had to put the milkers on each cow individually. My dad knew each cow individually. My brother did expand from the 40 cows my dad had to 100. I hate to say it but the farm was never as clean when he had it as it was when my dad had it. I kind of wondered how he passed the inspections to get the highest price for his milk.
I am currently living in Texas. (Originally from Michigan, but had been living in Cali for the prior 28 years) The big city centers are different, but the state as a whole, in my opinion, is a giant 3rd world hick town. The attitudes shown by the cattlemen of the 80s and 90s exists all-over the state. This, from a white, 50-something son, of an army retiree, and defense contractor. Love your content, Morgan. Keep it up. 👍👍👍
Yeah I’ve never understood how Dr Phil got popular. He always creeped me out and never seemed that smart. Did people literally just like him cause he’s Oprah approved?
I remember watching that show as it aired and followed the trial as it happened. Oprah's done a lot of good in this world---I hope she sees your story, you've told it all so well. Barn is looking FAB, btw. 😃
I'm not saying feed them anything. But cows will eat other animals. I've seen them eat snakes, young birds, and etc. Mainly because they're looking for calcium and other things their diet isn't giving them. A crunch bird skull is full of calcium after all.
Omg, thank you for the deep drive there into the meat industry in America - all very interesting and I can't say I knew of any of this before now as I'm from Australia - though it's got me wondering about our meat industry. The new barn/shed us looking good too.
So incredibly well-explained, Morgan. And as a black woman myself who watches all of your episodes, I deeply appreciate your inserting the racial aspect associated with this story. That is so courageous of you especially in this divisive era. What's more, you're a master storyteller. Thank you so much. P.S. I love Oprah, but she also gave us Dr. Oz. 😊😎
Dr Oz recently come under scrutiny of overseeing many vivisections on 1000's of animals. Dr. Catherine Dell'Orto, a former veterinary post-doctoral fellow at the columbia university testified......... Early 2000's "Dell’Orto testified that a dog experimented on by Oz’s team experienced lethargy, vomiting, paralysis, and kidney failure, but wasn’t euthanized for a full two days. She alleged other truly horrifying examples of gratuitously cruel treatment of dogs, including at least one dog who was kept alive for a month for continued experimentation despite her unstable, painful condition, despite how data from her continued experimentation was deemed unusable. According to Dell’Orto, one Oz-led study resulted in a litter of puppies being killed by intracardiac injection with syringes of expired drugs inserted in their hearts without any sedation. Upon being killed, the puppies were allegedly left in a garbage bag with living puppies who were their littermates."
I live in East Texas surrounded by smaller cattle ranches and they are some of the nicest people in the planet. They love their cattle and treat them well, anyone buying their meat from these ranches would be buying ethically sourced meat. We are, as a species, omnivores and should eat from every food group unless we have a food allergy. I do agree we shouldn’t make cows cannibal but no one I know feeds their cows garbage feed, they all rotate pastures and don’t crowd them at all. Plenty of fresh feed and space for them.
as someone who wasn't around to witness this case myself, I really appreciate how informative and entertaining your coverage of the history is you kept my attention for the entire duration of the video and now I've learned something new!
Awesome job Morgan! I’m loving these videos! It’s a shame that feedlots are still so common here in the US after all these years. I hope we see more change soon.
At the rate we Americans eat beef, the only way to keep it affordable is to raise them in feedlots en masse. It would be nice if beef was raised the way Morgan does, but if you think about it, it really isn't too practical.
@@michelefritchie6198 I completely disagree. It’s doable, people just don’t want change. If you saw the massive amount of meat we throw away every day at grocery stores you would be beside yourself. We produce TOO much as it is. The only reason the meat is as cheap as it is is because of government subsides, shipping the meat to other countries to be processed to cut costs, and because of what they are feeding the cows to begin with. I live in northern Colorado in cow country. I see the damage to the environment these lots are doing and how poorly the cows are treated. Our way of producing meat is not sustainable and the waste produced is unacceptable. All in the name of convenience so people can get their meat cheap at any time they want at the grocery store. We need more farms like Morgan’s. We need our government supporting local farms instead of these disasters we have now.
@@naerwyn239 yep! It’s a mess. I think education is important here. A lot of people don’t know where our food comes from so people don’t realize how bad it needs to change. I hope Morgan and more people like him keep making videos like this to bring awareness to others. I hope he does one on the fishing industry too, I know it doesn’t directly apply to his farm but the stats on waste and what not is absolutely staggering.
Herbivores do sometimes eat meat deers have been seen eating baby birds A cow would certainly eat a small little piece of meat now feeding them everyday would be bad but saying that they would never eat meat is not true
To think if maybe we were not such wasteful humans then maybe we wouldnt need to have this overwhelming amount of mass produced meat fed by who knows what and raised in who knows what conditions and we could all rely on smaller farms like it was before. We are literally finding a bunch of ways to kill our planet and ourselves as fast as possible. Silly humans. Morgan I respect you so much and enjoy all your content. I learn and I laugh and even cry. Thank you for being you.
Great story. Appreciated your details and energy and understanding of Oprah and racial challenges she faced. Thanks for talking about it! As far as ag industry. I quit eating meat years ago due to IBS and learned so much about mass animal industry and decided I was better off without it. My symptoms did go away. Avoided daily pills. So much madness and sadness in the mass ag market. If I ever did eat meat again it would be from a small farmer like you.
As much as I love your usual content, this was also super interesting. I vaguely recall this going on, but I think I was in college at the time, and dealing with other stuff. I do recall that in Canada, k.d.lang lost some country music fans when she came out against meat eating (I have relatives in cattle ranching).
I remember that trial. Another thing that came out of it and the mad cow scare in dairy cattle in Canada was a US farm registration system, so the government could track where cattle came from if disease was found at a USDA facility. But a lot of small farmers consider that government interference and refuse to register their farms or do the US Farm Census. I have mine registered and have signed up for the notices from the Texas Animal Health Commission that notify us where infectious diseases are cropping up in any livestock and may include deer harvested if the hunter designates the tissues to be sent into the state lab. As far as environmental safety, the latest disaster in the panhandle shows how big the dairy lobby is for a 'family farm' to be allowed to have up to 30,000 dairy cows on one farm. I hope the injured worker sues for damages. Get ready for higher cheese prices. Many of the dairies in the panhandle were moved there from California because of the environmental laws. A huge cheese factory was built nearby to take advantage of a cheap labor pool, too.
Morgan, the mad cow disease concern is serious. Please research BSE in wild deer for us. [Apologies to the two fans who liked my comment before I added the bit about the deer herds.]
Morgan, I must say that it bothers me that you feed your livestock a species appropriate diet yet continue to feed your dogs and cats the same garbage that feed lots feed their livestock. Perhaps you have done your homework and found the best quality processed kibble you could buy for your dogs and cat and hope that adding eggs and other things like that to their meals will improve the quality which is great if that’s the case. BUT I still don’t understand with your commitment to giving your livestock good and healthy lives why not no the same for your dogs and cats. You could easily raise meat for them as well as a few veggies for your dogs and give them exactly what their bodies were made to digest. On top of that you would be giving their once living food the same quality of life as the rest of your animals. I personally am working towards feeding my huge pack of dogs (35 dogs/wolfdogs to be exact… farmdogs, mushing dogs and a few co-owns and foster fails) a full home raised raw diet. Which I got into raising poultry because of you thanks, but I digress. I know a few small farmers like the Freewarden channel who raise their own dog food meat for their 3 dogs and barn cats as well as giving them scraps from butchering. You could totally do this and personally I think you should! If you’re worried about not feeding them a balanced diet there’s tons of resources online to help with that including RU-vid channels as well as Certified Canine and Feline Raw Food Nutritionists like myself. Possibly another concern you may have is that your dogs and cats will turn on your poultry once they start eating fresh meat. There’s plenty of farm dogs that have no issues eating a whole raw fully feathered chicken yet treat the living poultry with respect. But this is also a concern with me and my working farm dogs so I just make sure what they eat doesn’t look like what they work with. Whether that be feeding them other whole animals they don’t interact with or removing heads, feet, feathers or fur so it just looks like a chunk of meat and bone and not something that was once living. While this probably isn’t necessarily with my farm dogs I personally rather be safe than sorry. So I hope these things don’t hold you back from making the switch and if you haven’t seen it yet watch the documentary Pet Fooled although you may have an Oprah reaction after seeing it! 😅 Regardless of what you decide to feed your animals I appreciate everything you do for your animals as well as sharing everything you’re learning and experiencing on your farm! 🥰
Great video! Very informative and detailed! Thank you for going over everything that had happened. It's important to learn from the past in order to not repeat mistakes. That shows the events that happened. ❤❤
Knudnick farmer drawing attention to hound hunters, I'm in stitches Morgan, but on the serious note, it's made me question the meat I eat, I love meat, but it's extremely important for me to know what that animal has been fed. There's only one farm I can think of in the whole world that I would consider moving close to to buy all my meat from & freeze it & then go buy some more every six months. That farm is in Vermont hint hint, even seriously thinking of having just a tiny farm for my self with maybe ten chickens, 6 geese, a few goats & a few cows where I'd raise them two hundred percent from what I've learnt from you ❤
The more you talk about what's being fed to our food the more motivated and determined I am to start producing my own meat when I move to the new property!
We're retired and found ourselves in 2018 wondering where the safest place to live in the US and where we could try to be self reliant. We did chickens for eggs and later raised them for meat. Well chickens are a lot of work and my husband and I could not keep up the pace. We went to rabbits with just a small flock of laying hens to feed the two of us. Rabbits are so much easier to raise and process and it's also awesome protein source. We went a yr without our egg layers to see if we could manage and NO WAY could I stomach the store bought eggs YUCK So the way things are going I think that Morgan is showing us that what goes into our food at any given time is not good. We have a small raised bed garden yet even that is getting to be a bit much. We dehydrate to insure the next summer incase we can't do it. We live out in the country by a stream and try to live our best life. I hope you can do the same
Pigs, on the other hand, are native cannibals. Wild boars will often consume rivals from other sounders that they've killed in territorial disputes. Domestic Sows will sometimes kill and eat their own young which is why they're often times separated from their mother after birth and fed from a bottle.
Interesting story Morgan, but remember how economically privileged you actually are. Both of us do not have the money or space to raise our own food so we just have to do our best. I do wonder what impact Oprah hard on keeping mad cow from getting really bad here. It was probably a not insignificant impact.
I'm from The UK and the Mad Cow crisis probably hit us harder than anywhere else. The hysteria of the time would have us having a quarter of a million or more BSE deaths a year by now, I don't know the exact figures but I'd guess the fatalities have been in the hundreds over the years, not even thousands (that's still way too many deaths because of bad farming practices). Whilst we're not perfect the aftermath has been that laws were introduced that mean we probably have the safest meat (not just beef) in the world, bad farming practices still (not Morgan or homesteaders but big business) in the USA mean that most US meat is banned here and the proof is in the eating, pretty much every American I've met who visits our fair isle remarks on how much nicer our meat tastes. So I'd say to the Americans who read this to try and find a local ethical farmer, butcher or store to buy your meat from, it may be a little more expensive but it will taste so much better than the mass produced rubbish you're used to.
OMG, what kind of humans were/are we? That is so sick I can't even express it. Shocking, just shocking. No wonder we had diseases forming. GREED, plain and Simple, GREED. Cows DO NOT EAT MEAT! Period! Thank God it was exposed and I hope that practice not happening ANY LONGER. Thanks Morgan for being this to light and sharing it.
I love a good history lesson by Morgan Gold. There was so much to learn from this lawsuit which I always felt was more due to bruised egos than bruised beef prices. I had forgotten one fact though, this lawsuit was also Dr. Phil's origin story. 😳
I sooo Love how you can tell a story... respecting copyrights to people's rights... with facts and emotions... it's colorful and respectful... and we learn alot!!!...Thank You and G.od Bless You! :)
I remember this! It was a huge thing and somehow factory farming, downed cows, candy-crunching cows, etc., were spun into the whole Mad Cow craze and it just confused a lot of people. I like her, but Oprah has let a lot loose a lot of quacks (apologies to ducks) on the public--Dr. Phil, Dr. Oz, Dr. Drew. I appreciate your very well researched story. I buy my meat from a local farm cooperative--Walden Farms in Massachusetts. Know your farmer and you'll know your meat! :)
Sounds like you have a "beef" against Dr. Phil, which you do not explain. But it really was the point of this episode. I never accepted Oprah or Dr. Phil as my gurus and paid little attention to them. But Dr. Phil shook me to my core during COVID when I saw him basically say, practically crying, old folks should go ahead and die "voluntarily" so his stock market portfolio would stop losing value. I can't believe people still watch him. All he cares about is his money. He is obviously an extraordinary PR talent. He was successful with Oprah against the cattle industry and his own image. Point of fact for fairness and clarity. Oprah Winfrey and Maya Angelou were BFFs before the term existed. So Maya was probably at the trial for moral support.
Please refer to my country as the UK. England is only part of United Kingdom. England excludes Wales and Scotland and North Ireland. The cow illness was a UK problem.
the first cases of BSE in america were in the 1950's. or did the cattle lobby cover that up in america.... check your history BSE first happened in the states due to low temperatures in cooking animal waste meat products.... I used to work in bone meal processing plant when I was younger, nothing goes to waste. Bitter Harvest is the film based on the events of the contaminated food
Gee, a bunch of white men in Texas might be racist? Wow. I never would have guessed. (sarcasm) And the men in the lawsuit were old enough to remember segregation - which wasn't just limited to the South. Sundown towns existed across the North as well (and still do in some places). The segregation in the North tended to be more of a "gentleman's agreement" than codified into law, but it still existed. My mother went to segregated schools in Nebraska, Minnesota, and Iowa (and she was 4 years old when the Civil Rights Bill passed). She wasn't aware of the fact that her schools were segregated intentionally, but that doesn't change the fact that they were. And if that's the legacy in the North, what's the legacy of segregation look like in the South where they had Jim Crow?
One thing I would say is this: Althought herbivores eat mostly plants, they DO eat animal-based materials from time to time as supplement for nutrition they cannot get from plants. Eg.:They will outright hunt for baby birds in the grass to eat them. They seek out animal carcasses to eat meat and chew on bones. They will also chew up bunnies/hares they can find and catch. So cattle DOES need some animal-based products to be healthy. Or you will need additional supplements to complete their diet. However, you should never overdo it! Obviously the guys feeding animal products in such a scale was way too much and outright unhealthy for the cattle. But a little bit is needed for a healthy and happy cow/bull.
This is VERY INTERESTING, I never paid any attention to this. Nor did I watch Oprah. Just wasnt in to her. I have noticed those huge piles covered with white plastic and tires. I was SHOCKED to find that these are the remnants of the harvest that they cut down and grind and cover to ferment then feed back to the cows. I have watched this pile being moved from the fermented batch to the cows, and replaced with next crop by the bulldozers as I drive thru Amarillo and watch the feed lots beside the highways. Apparently, it is cheaper and takes cows less time to digest fermented grass and corn stalks, or whatever grains they use. I'm a bit sceptical that fermented food for cows is better than free range or fresh grass. I certainly wouldn't to my goats.... but people do with chickens. So I'd be interested to see what the truth is
To think, the meat industry, politicians, and economists in the US get offended and can't understand why many countries have banned imports of farm animals, meats, and/or meat products from the USA. 🤪 Feeding any sort of animal material to any rudiment animal is illegal in my country 🦘 and I'm grateful for that, as well as the overall higher standard of animal welfare and food safety laws we have.
it seems fitting that Mad Cow Disease spawned Dr. Phil... I can't stand the guy.. watched an episode years ago, where this lady had obvious anxiety issues and he just told her to get over herself. Love your stuff Morgan.
My brother and I have been in cattle business since the 90s. We have been asked if we use hormones to beef up our cattle. More weight, etc.. nope, we will not use this. We feed pellets only when it's snows are ice over. So their normal feed is grass. They are natural grazing animals. Plus, we learned early to breed by the Longhorn Cross. Since then, we rarely have to call a vet out.
Agriculture is agriculture. I support local farmers first, but also support larger production ag. I am glad the industry gives its consumers options of price points and production styles. We have to work together, as agriculturalists, to give the general public a safe and enjoyable product.
They were absolutely putting the bone meal of cattle into cattle feed in England post-WW2 and that's the primary reason behind the outbreak over there. And the reason why cannibalism is bad (regardless of the species) isn't for moral reasons (although the disgust response is definitely something we evolved for a reason). The problem is that if the meat (or bone meal) of an infected individual is ingested, the eater is more likely to catch the disease if they are the same species as the one consumed. This also applies to close evolutionary relatives as well, which is why eating the meat of great apes and even monkeys is extremely risky and that's how HIV spread to humans in the first place. Some species are able to withstand the risk better than others and usually those are animals that specialize as scavengers. Their stomachs are extremely good at killing any diseases (bacteria, viruses, etc) that their food has and so can usually survive as cannibals even with the increased risk. This is also why most animals don't eat their own dead. It's evolutionarily advantageous to miss a meal once than catch a disease that will severely weaken or kill the animal in question.
For anyone who wants to learn more about mad cow disease and the time line of it, I'd definitely suggest watching Biographic's video on it. It's a very informative video and supplements this one very nicely.
