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Food - Its Not What It Used To Be People throughout the globe have become plugged in and wired yet ever more in danger of drowning in a tsunami of advertising which promotes societal and technological machines as the way and the truth. Undoubtedly machines are powerful aids to human life, but one suspects that the former aid has performed a quiet coup d'etat and has usurped the life forces of Nature (and human nature) to feed its own insatiable demands for more power, more speed. Machines have now broken down the last wall of resistance to their inorganic unnaturalness, food. What started with Lord Sandwiche has now reached the perfected product of machine mentality, the big mac. What was 100% organic has now become inorganic, what was a herbivore has been forced to become a cannibal. The BSE disease, first surfacing in the media in the UK, is the most transparent example yet of the implications of machine food. The revelation that BSE and its human form may be able to jump the species barrier and be highly infective even when a person or animal with the disease shows no signs of it, appears to confirm some of the worst fears scientists have about the fatal condition. The disease, bovine spongiform encephalopathy, has already caused a cattle epidemic costing more than £4bn, and its human toll of 73 deaths so far - all except three being Britons - is climbing steadily. Its eventual impact on the health of the human population and the cost to the NHS, is almost impossible to measure. Yet when the cattle disease first emerged in 1986, UK government advisers dismissed any threat to people. Now Europe quakes. Scientists believe that countries, such as Germany, which profess not to have BSE, are likely to have some cattle suffering from it even if the disease has not yet taken sufficient hold for it to be obvious. The first known case of BSE, in a cow on a farm in Pitsham, Sussex, occured in December 1984, almost two years before the disease was identified. In fact, the illness may have begun to set in during the early 1970s, but at such a low level that vets and farmers did not recognise it as a new disease. Feeding practices, in dairy farms particularly, where cows' diets included the groundre mains of other cattle and sheep, probably sent the disease into its catastrophic spiral. Even now cases in Britain far outstrip those anywhere else. There have been more than 177,000 cases, nearly 780 confirmed so far this year. By contrast, Ireland has had a total of 489 BSE cases, Portugal nearly 350 and Switzerland 365. France, with whom the beef war drags on ,has had just over 100 cases, with 28 this year. There have also been two cases of human BSE in that country and one in Ireland. There have been numerous forecasts about the eventual human death toll. Some estimates, putting it at less than 100, already look too optimistic. Others have judged it be hundreds of thousands. Oxford statisticians earlier this month painted a worst case scenario of 136,000. After years in which warnings of death through eating infected meat met public scorn, in March 1995 the fatalities began. But it was March 1996 before scientists made the first connection. The first victim to die was Stephen Churchill, aged 19, though the first person to show symptoms is thought to have been a 50-year-old, in January 1994. Even now it is thought victims are most likely to have been infected by exposure to cheap meat-cuts from highly infective parts of cattle before the first anti-BSE controls to protect human health were introduced in 1989. Measures to stop humans spreading the disease have included changes to blood transfusions, the use of more disposable equipment and more rigorous sterilisation. New Zealand's government has banned the taking and use of blood from people who have been in Britain over the last 15 years. Nevertheless the proof that a species barrier between humans and the animals they eat does not exist changes the perception of food. As the infamous poster on student flat walls in the 60's prophesied, `you are what you eat'. If you eat cows you will be exposing yourself to cow diseases if you eat the products of metallic machines, you will harden up, become prone to cancer, a disease of forced uncontrolled growth. Even cows appearing healthy may be capable of infecting people more easily than had been supposed. So scientists will have to consider whether they are removing enough offal from the food chain. European-wide offal bans are only just being introduced. Just one cow slipping through the net could infect up to 500,000 people. There is also the suggestion that transmission of BSE-like diseases through different species may create new, more virulent strains. Scrapie, a BSE-like disease in sheep not known to be harmful to humans, is now disguising the BSE agent that has entered sheep through animal feed and been recycled through the generations. Scrapie-infected sheep brains are being tested with mice in the laboratories. Last month, the UK food standards agency suggested such a BSE-like strain might be identified "at any moment". Contingency plans , including altering slaughterhouse and butchery practices, are already being prepared to try to avert another food panic. Britain does not routinely test for BSE in cattle planned for human food. And, unlike other countries, the UK does not destroy all the animals of a herd when a BSE case is identified. The UK, the birth place of industrialism is the last to see its shadow. Billions of pounds-worth of preventative measures are already in place. And the question remains, how much more needs to be spent? The discerning individual would ask a bigger question, is money the answer? If not, then the brave new machine world needs to be avoided wherever possible. Withdrawl of support by changing one's buying habits is both prudent, non-violent and marvelously effective in bringing about change - organic change. ..
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