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I wonder what other diseases involve similiar reactions. It would be a
prudent precaution to buy organic foods whenever possible. The hormones
in non-organic meats are strongly implicated in breast and other cancers
as well.
The complete story is available on-line today, or ask me and I will
forward it to you. I have shortened what I am sending here.
David Wimberly
Monday, April 13, 1998 The Halifax Herald Limited
Ministry in U-turn on mad cow theory
By MICHAEL HORNSBY / The Times of London
London - A hill farmer treated for 10 years as a tiresome crank has
been told by the Ministry of Agriculture that his theory about
pesticides causing "mad cow" disease merits research after all.
Mark Purdey, an organic dairy farmer near Elworthy, Somerset, received
a letter from the ministry after he gave evidence earlier this month
to the BSE inquiry.
The ministry had previously refused to give any credence to Mr
Purdey's claims. The change was prompted by experiments at the
Institute of Psychiatry in London suggesting that Phosmet, an
organophosphate pesticide used to kill parasites, could have made
cattle far more susceptible to BSE. These findings coincided with
doubts about the official hypothesis that BSE was caused by scrapie
being passed to cattle in feed containing rendered sheep remains.
Attempts to find a strain of scrapie that looks like BSE have failed,
and many scientists now suspect that the disease may always have been
present in cattle at a very low level. Phosmet could have been the
trigger that caused what had been a rare endemic condition to explode
to epidemic proportions.
The ministry first crossed swords with Purdey in 1982 when it ordered
farmers to treat their cattle with Phosmet twice a year to kill warble
fly, a parasite that harms the animals health and reduces the
commercial value of their hides. After a legal battle Purdey was
exempted from using the pesticide and allowed to treat his herd of 70
Jerseys with a non-organophosphate alternative.
"When the first cases of BSE were reported, I was sceptical that
infected feed could be the explanation," he said. "There has never
been a case of BSE in any animal born and bred on an organic farm. Yet
I, and most other organic farmers, had all given our cattle the
supposedly infected feed."
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