mad cows
Bill Liebhardt (wcliebhardt@ucdavis.edu)
Wed, 27 Mar 1996 09:32:12 -0800 (PST)
A few comments about the mad cow disease and some other factors. The cows
get the disease from eating diseased sheep which were rendered and fed to
the cattle. Can anyone envision cattle eating dead or diseased sheep on
there own? Not in your wildest nightmare most likely. What we have in my
opinion is a practice which should not have happened because cattle are
vegetarian. If sustainable agriculture is about using nature as the model
or enhancing the way nature works then violating this simple principle can
and in this case led to the serious problem that now exits. It also shows
that prevention is a much better approach than trying to clean up the mess
that now has to be dealt with. Anyone using these procedures or thinking of
using these practices now has a real life lesson about the potential
pitfalls. This maybe a message for other technologies that seem to violate
the way a natural system would behave. When we have very powerful
technologies<such as nuclear power or methyl bromide> the chance to do great
harm is always a possibility. So here is where human behavior is so
important. What should our role be when we have such power? In my opinion
we should be very conservative about disrupting nature or natural processes
and we should have a high degree of humility. We do not usually know very
much about the systems we are intervening in and to intervene in a massive
way in something we do not understand to a large degree is somewhat
arrogant. As we are now seeing this can and may lead to problems that we
cannot anticipate.
Bill Liebhardt