Product Description
When the cattle-borne sickness known as Mad Cow Disease first appeared in America in 2003, authorities were quick to assure the nation that the outbreak was isolated, quarantined, and posed absolutely no danger to the general public.

What we were not told was that the origins of the sickness may already have been here and suspected for a quarter of a century.

This illuminating exposé of the threat to our nation's health reveals for the first time how Mad Cow Disease (a.k.a. Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy) has jumped species, infecting humans in the form of Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (CJD), and may be hidden in the enormous increase in the number of Alzheimer's cases since 1979.

Detailing the history and biology of Mad Cow Disease, Brain Trust discloses how an investigation into the mysterious deaths in a group of cannibals in a remote part of the world evolved into a research program in the United States that may have had unforeseen and frightening consequences.

The shocking questions examined include:

• Have millions of Americans already been exposed to the prions known to cause Mad Cow Disease through years of eating tainted beef?

• Does the epidemic of prion disease spreading like wildfire through the nation's deer and elk pose a threat to hunters and venison eaters?

• Are the cattle mutilations discovered in the last 30 years part of a covert, illegal sampling program designed to learn how far the deadly prions have spread throughout the nation's livestock and beef products?

Exposing the devastating truth about Mad Cow Disease and a new theory of the possible consequences of a little-known government research program and the potential national health catastrophe that may be the result, Brain Trust inoculates Americans with an effective cure: the truth. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (19)

Emotion not science
Will being a vegetarian make you healthier? - Yes.
Will using an emotional argument to claim prions in meat is the cause of the majority of dementia be well recieved? Yes, but it's wrong, not scientific, unproven, and very conspiracy driven.

Brain Trust
This is an excellent book and I believe it is an important book for anyone that wants to learn about the meat industry, health, and the government that is supposed to make sure our food is safe for eating. I will never look at meat the same.Reading the book makes one realize the danger that lurks in our food.

Great insight into prion disease
This was a great story as well as being enlightening.The last few chapters were a little bit noisy and not as refined as the rest of the book.

The main criticism I have of this book is that it never proves or shows its thesis, which is the "hidden connection between mad cow and Alzheimer's".Never gives any real evidence of it, just hints at it here and there.However, it is very enlightening into the history of prion disease and I'd highly recommend this book since for the most part it stays completely away from pseudoscience and focuses on factual history.I thought this book would make me more paranoid, but actually having a little more understanding made me less paranoid.Although, I will be careful about the type of beef (or any other meat) that I eat and I would never for the life of me eat venison.

Not very original, not very well-written
The majority of what's in this book appears to be a rather poor retelling of things wriiten by other authors. For example, much of the discussion of the Fore people and their kuru epidemic seems to be based on Richard Rhodes book, "Deadly Feasts" -- run through a blender and reassembled. Unfortunately, Kelleher's retelling lacks the coherence of Rhodes' work.

The two original themes in "Brain Trust" are:

* The various forms of transmissable spongiform encephalopthy (TSE) in the USA and Canada began with deliberate attempts to infect various species with kuru at the Pautuxent River veterinary facility in Maryland. Kelleher maps out what he claims is the cross-species jump and spread of TSE resulting from improperly-contained and quarantined experimental animals at that facility.

* The cattle mutilations in the western United States are the result of a covert monitoring program (started in the 1970s) trying to track the spread of TSE in wild and domesticated animal populations. He fails to offer any explanation of who might be doing the monitoring, or how they plan to use the information once they've gathered it. Silent helicopters lifting cattle off the ground off the ground for autopsy in the dark of night, then dropping their mutilated carcasses back to the earth. It's all very "X-Files", but I'm not sure what purpose it serves.

There are better books dealing with specific aspects of the TSE story: the particulars of prion infections, the poor record-keeping related to CJD/BSE/Alzheimer's deaths, the Fore tribe and kuru -- all are covered more coherently and in greater detail elsewhere.

Great Research...Few Questions though
This is a very well researched and extremely convincing book showing how our nations food supply (and overall wildlife) may have been compromised with an Infectious Protien (Prion). He even convinced me that the cattle mutilations aren't mysterious at all, they are just straightforward monitoring of these Prions. I feel that this information is very important but do have some questions after reading the book such as "what can we do to protect ourselves"...i hope the answer isnt "nothing". The very scary thing that the book points out is that it takes a few years for infected cattle to show symptoms...so a cow with mad cow disease is rarely discovered to be sick before it enters our supermarkets. The other thing about this book is that it is written so well...it reads like a mystery...you just wanna keep turning the pages! ... Read more

Product Description

Contemporary concerns about food such as those stemming from mad cow disease, salmonella, and other potential food-related dangers are hardly new-humans have long been wary of what they eat. Beyond the fundamental fear of hunger, societies have sought to protect themselves from rotten, impure, or unhealthy food. From the markets of medieval Europe to the slaughterhouses of twentieth-century Chicago, Madeleine Ferrières traces the origins of present-day behavior toward what we eat as she explores the panics, myths, and ever-shifting attitudes regarding food and its safety. She demonstrates that food fears have been inspired not only by safety concerns but also by cultural, political, and religious prejudices.

Flour from human bones and pâté from dead cats are just two of the more unappetizing recipes that have scared consumers away from certain foods. Ferrières considers the roots of these and other rumors, illuminating how societies have assessed and attempted to regulate the risks of eating. She documents the bizarre and commonsensical attempts by European towns to ensure the quality of beef and pork, ranging from tighter controls on butchers to prohibiting Jews and menstruating women from handling meat. Examining the spread of Hungarian cattle disease, which ravaged the livestock of seventeenth-century Europe, Ferrières recounts the development of safety methods that became the Western model for fighting animal diseases.

Ferrières discusses a wealth of crucial and curious food-related incidents, trends, and beliefs, including European explorers' shocked responses to the foodways of the New World; how some foods deemed unsafe for the rich were seen as perfectly suitable for the poor; the potato's negative reputation; the fierce legal battles between seventeenth-century French bread bakers and innkeepers; the role of the medical profession in food regulation; and how modern consumerism changed the way we eat. Drawing on history, folklore, agriculture, and anthropology, Ferrières tells us how our decisions about whatnot to eat reflect who we are.

Product Description
It is only common sense to recognize that when we consume a fluid that has been emitted from an animal, or the actual flesh itself, we are at risk for whatever ailed the animal. The implications of this suggestion are so enormous. The dairy and meat industries have clung to the idea that it has not been proven that the species barrier could be crossed may be a fatal conclusion. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

An important and well documented book:
What are we doing in this hand basket and where are we going?
That is what comes to mind after reading a book such as this.
We cannot afford to keep our heads in the sand.
Read this book and make the choices that need to be made.An excellent book.The author has integrity and compassion.
Uh oh..I noticed I only gave it one star..oops..it should have five...

Disastrous food chain
Amazon.com is the only place where I could find "Mad Cows and Milk Gate" a year after the trials. At the time that Texas cattlemen, led by billionaire Paul Engler, owner of Cactus Feeders, Inc., filed suit against Lyman, Oprah, Harpo Productions last year, you could find this very informative book "Mad Cows and Milk Gate" written by Dr Hulse in all the major bookstores. Dr. Hulce, a former dairy inspector, reminds us about this inhumane injustice to our planet's herbivores. He informs us of the potential diseases laid out before our human race in our near future. Will an outbreak like Britain's have to open us to the truth--when it maybe too late.According to Dr. Hulce, our pets are also at risk because their food is also being tampered.Remember the movie "Soylent Green" staring Charlton Heston in 1973?New York City and planet Earth in the future is overpopulated.The human feed is Soylent Green, a soybean and lentil mixture with human bodies thrown in.Like the humans in the movie, the cattle don't know what they are eating.The book " Mad Cows and Milk Gate" is about America's cattle eating ground up sheep, (with a history of Scrapie a mad sheep disease for the last 40 years in the United States). Ground up cattle bones, cow's blood, dogs, cats, chicken, pigs, chicken and turkey feathers, and road kill are mixed in with their feed.These ingredients are unknown to farmers who just want their cows to produce more milk and to create "Super Cows." This process creates larger milk yields and super herds of cattle for America's super table. Bovine Leukemia, cancer, Crohn's disease and so many other diseases are the result of this mad feeding.Dr. Hulse took extreme care in the writing of this very informative book because it is his duty to expose how man's feeding practices make God's creatures unclean.

You are what you eat...
Let me first say that I am not one of Dr. Hulse's peers and I had much difficulty plowing through his heavy medical terms and Latin words usage, however, I was able to grasp the argument that he put forward.Also, I want to be sure that you have the correct picture of Dr. Hulse in mind before going further.He is not an environmental wacko, in fact, I would say that he is fond of meat, milk and eggs.He is against what America's food industries have become and the result it had on our food chain.He tells us why America's meat, milk and eggs are no longer safe for human consumption, when that happened, what needs to be done to correct the problem, and why nothing seems to be getting done.Essentially, the problems are a result of feeding meat protein and manure, which is converted into feed pellets, to cattle, hogs and chickens.The dead animals include cattle, hogs and chickens that died from disease and therefore cannot be fed to humans.The rendering process for turning a cow carcass into food pellets for other cows to eat does not kill all the pathogens and the disease is then passed on to the next herd of cows.Cows with leukemia, cancer and other illnesses are milked until their milk production decreases to far, which then the cow is culled from the herd and rendered into feed for other cows.Pasteurization techniques that used to kill the virus and bacterium in milk have changed and now allow some of the pathogens into the food chain.Farmers are routinely using antibiotics as a preventive measure to get the most from their herds.These are the same antibiotics that people need.Overuse of the antibiotics is creating strains of bacteria that are not affected by the antibiotic.When a person is sick from one of these new strains their doctors will not have an antibiotic solution to cure them.Those antibiotics also make it to the dinner table in milk.Another drug that makes it to your table is the growth hormones given to cattle either to make them produce more milk or to make them leaner.A leaner cow will bring the farmer more money at slaughter than a fat cow.Our chicken industry has its share of problems too.Feeding dead chickens and chicken manure to chickens is causing salmonella to spread throughout the entire flock.

Dr. Hulse goes on to expose the drug industry's efforts to keep hormones and antibiotics in farming, how the American food industries are influencing congress and are trying to force their tainted products on other countries who don't want to eat our stuff.They have laws changed in their favor that block free speech against their product and have definitions of words like "organic" changed so organic food could include their tainted products.They influence the FDA and USDA to reduce food inspection quality at every turn.Dr. Hulse claims that the cost to the consumer through his or her own medical bills and reduced quality of life far exceeds the cost to the food industry if it were to clean up its act. Yet, the American people know little about what they eat and congress will not act until an epidemic sweeps across the nation.This was a hard book to read but well worth the effort.It gets five stars from me because Dr. Hulse's changed the way I think when I make decisions about what food I am about to eat.Also, I like to say that the meat and milk industry are apparently still owned and operated by the same people that Upton Sinclair exposed in his book, "The Jungle." ... Read more