Filed Under: Mad Cow Disease

Mad Cow scaremonger flexes his fear muscle

It’s been nearly three years since Sheldon Rampton (along with his partner John Stauber) published a scare-campaign manifesto entitled Mad Cow U.S.A.: Could the Nightmare Happen Here? Most thinking people have long since come to the conclusion that the book’s titular question should be answered with a resounding “No.” England has known mad cow disease since 1985, and we simply haven’t had a problem with it on this side of the Atlantic. Nonetheless, Rampton revisits the issue in the not-so-impartial E Magazine, claiming that we are all vulnerable to the disease, and acknowledging only that “the USDA has yet to detect [mad cow] in the U.S.” (emphasis added). In one doom-and-gloom-infected sidebar, Rampton predicts a six-figure death toll; another focuses on the imagined threat of “mad deer disease.” If you’re not yet familiar with the details of how “mad deer” has been used by anti-meat activists to justify the unfounded U.S. mad cow scare, our special report on the subject is a great primer.

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