Ask Rabbi Lerner - how to becoome a rabbi?

Re: Re: Re: Moldavia, Moldova or Something

poltroon: Lerner, or any of the main members of "the other forum."

BTW, Ted, it looks like "the other guys" (I hate to even name them or their POS forum) are finally taking cheap shots at you. Welcome to the club.

DI and Jamesville (you need to scroll down to 12/20/05, titled "DI and Jamesville")

 

Re: Re: Re: Re: Moldavia, Moldova or Something

Crap, if Ted is getting flamed over on the military loon channel then I guess that I'm going to have to pay him more respect now.

(Just kidding, Ted. ... Oops, that didn't sound right either. Okay you know what I mean. )

 

Re: Moldavia

Recently there have been several threads that have heated up to the point where they were locked or some other Moderator intervention was required. In an effort to be evenhanded in this regard I would ask that you make your point without name-calling.
Thanks.
Jack

 

Re: Re: Re: Re: Moldavia, Moldova or Something

You are in error, I don't post on that military site.
Just another one of these lies about me, I lost the count.

Remember that some here are no better than "the other guys"
over there.
The log in their eyes is blocking their vision.

Learner

 

Learner,

In all fairness, I have seen you become a bit more respectful towards others in your last few posts. Can’t you see that Jack just defended you against a personal attack and warned us that he would close the thread if such attacks continue. Count your blessings. Don’t get so defensive. I know at some point even some of my comments have been very hard on you. I do not take back or apologize for anything I posted on this board. But I will make the commitment not to attack or be disrespectful to you as long as it is not warranted. But you must understand that respect is a two way street. You did step on a lot of toes in this board in the past. Lets try to amend our behavior like civilized men and women. To follow Jimmy’s example, let’s throw each other an olive branch and start all over.

Sincerely,

 

Sounds good.
I agree that respect is a two way street.
Appreciate what Jack did.
Optimistic and happy about the future, olive brunch extended and accepted.

Learner

 

Right back at you kid. This can be the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

Take care,

 

"olive brunch"

You gonna eat that?

 

"A mi me encantan las aceitunas con mostaza de desayuno/almuerzo."

 

I'm beginning to be sorry I'm a vegetarian.

 

But I thought you were Lutheran, not an Adventist. Me, after spending five years in a Seventh Day Adventist elementary school I like my meat red and rare.

 

Yuk! Yuk! Yuk!

Well done, through and through!

P.S. Don't worry, Miguel, the political board will activate after the first of the year, especially after The State of the Union addresss!

I've not always kept my word when I said I was either leaving DI or not posting on certain boards. This time, however, I am very serious: no more posts on political or off-topic boards.

 

Only if its Kosher .

As far as vegetarianism any Hindu - Indian's here?

I know someone who fights for preservation of holy cows go figure
strange and wonderful world.

Learner

 

I know there is probably an increased danger of mad cow disease if you undercook red meat, but I love the taste of blood. Furthermore, the way things are going mad cow disease will probably be an improvement in my perception of the current state of affairs.

 

¡Vampiro!

 

I never drink vine...

 

Ummm... not so much. All there's an increased danger of in eating undercooked red meat is foodborne illnesses caused by things (usually bacteria and viruses) that are normally killed or inactivated by adequate cooking temperatures maintained for adequate periods of time. That's all.

Bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) (the so-called "mad cow disease") is a chronic degenerative disease that affects the central nervous system of cattle. BSE is named -- and the word "spongiform" is part of it -- because of the spongy appearance of the brain tissue of infected cattle examined under a microscope.

BSE belongs to a family of diseases known as the transmissible spongiform encephalopathies (TSEs). TSE diseases found animals in the US include scrapie in sheep and goats, chronic wasting disease in deer and elk, transmissible spongiform encephalopathy in mink, and feline spongiform encephalopathy in cats. In humans, there's kuru, both classic and variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, Gerstmann-Straussler-Scheinker syndrome, and fatal familial insomnia. These human variants are sometimes called, as a group, "human spongiform encephalopathy." Inspecting the brains of human victims at autopsy reveals the same sort of spongiform brain tissue appearance that is observed in BSE-infected cows and other animal TSE victims. It is worthy of note that there is no evidence to date that BSE has emanated from TSEs in other animals.

But as to whether a human who consumes BSE-infected meat product could then develop a human form of spongiform encephalopathy... well... that, it seems, is possible. Although not scientifically proven yet, there is very strong epidemiologic and laboratory data linking the consumption by humans of BSE-contaminated meat product to a rare, degenerative, fatal brain disorder in humans called variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (vCJD) -- a sort of human version of "mad cow disease," if you will. For the record, this vCJD variant should not be confused with the "classic" form of Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (CJD) that has been around since long before BSE was ever discovered or talked about.

The possibly BSE-caused variant CJD (vCJD) begins primarily with psychiatric symptoms, and affects younger (median age, 28 years) patients. As of December 2003, a total of only 153 cases of vCJD had been reported in the world: 143 from the United Kingdom, six from France, and one each from Canada, Ireland, Italy, and the US; and the one from the US is in a young woman who likely contracted the disease while living in the United Kingdom. Symptoms appeared after she moved to the United States. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has not found additional cases in the United States through its surveillance program.

The classic form of Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (not the potentially BSE-causing vCJD kind) is endemic throughout the world, including the United States. The median age at death of patients with classic CJD in the United States is 68 years, and very few cases occur in persons under 30 years of age. In contrast, the median age at death of patients with vCJD is 28 years, so health officials can tell that there's definitely something new going on since the discovery of BSE in the world.

One piece of good news: There is no scientific evidence to suggest that milk and dairy products carry the agent that causes BSE.

Properly (or, more accurately, adequately) cooking red meat is a common precaution against most of the foodborne illnesses that can be caused by eating inadequately-cooked red meat because most of the things that cause such foodborne illnesses are bacteria or viruses which tend to be killed or inactivated by sufficient heat, applied for a sufficient period of time.

However, what causes BSE (or what is BSE-related and present in some red meat which could potentially be passed-on to humans who consume it, and which might then cause a human form of spongiform encephalopathy), though it is not completely understood yet, is almost certainly not any kind of bacteria or virus... or any fully-formed living entity, for that matter. Rather, the responsible agents are more at the cellular protein level. Although other types of agents have been implicated, the theory that is most accepted in the scientific community is that the responsible agent is a prion, which is an abnormal form of an otherwise normal protein known as a cellular prion protein.

It is known that cattle can become infected with BSE by eating feed contaminated with the infectious BSE agent, which is suspected to be a mammalian protein. This is why in 1997 the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) prohibited the use of most mammalian protein in the manufacture of animal feed intended for cattle and other ruminants (More...).

BSE is not a contagious disease, either. There is no evidence that it is transmitted through direct contact or animal-to-animal (or animal-to-human) spread. The primary means by which animals become infected is through consumption of feed contaminated with the infectious BSE agent. Period. Spreading the disease from cow to human -- if that's even possible -- could only happen by the human ingesting parts of the cow where the potentially spongiform encephalopathy-causing mammalian proteins could be found.

TSE agents -- mammalian proteins like prion -- are extremely (and the word "extremely" doesn't really even begin to cover it) resistant to heat, ultraviolet light, ionizing radiation, normal sterilization processes, and common disinfectants that normally inactivate the viruses and bacteria which cause foodborne illnesses. So, undercooking red meat will make no difference, one way or the other, with regard to whether a spongiform encephalopathy-causing mammalian protein will be sucessfully passed from red meat to the human who consumes it.

What can be useful to humans wishing to enjoy their red meat, but who would like to avoid ingesting a TSE agent, is knowing which kinds of red meat -- or, said another way, which parts of the cow -- should probably be avoided altogether because of their statistically higher likelihood of containing TSE agents. Current scientific research confirms that BSE infectivity occurs in the brain, trigeminal ganglia, tonsils, spinal cord, dorsal root ganglion, and distal ileum of the small intestine of cattle experimentally infected with the BSE agent. Research also confirms that BSE infectivity is in the brain, spinal cord, and retina of the eyes of cattle infected with the agent under field conditions. Although bone marrow has demonstrated infectivity in experimentally infected cattle, these findings are not yet conclusive. So that should tell humans what parts of the cow to avoid if they're concerned about consuming TSE agents from cows. Heat, through cooking, won't stop TSE agents from successfully making their way from the cow to the human who consumes it. Only avoiding eating the parts of the cow in which TSEs are found will even begin to make a difference; and, of course, avoiding red meat altogether is just about the only way to ensure that TSEs are not passed from cow to human through said human's ingestion of said cow.

Of course, products such as hamburger typically include -- or at least they used to include -- some of the parts of the cow that have been shown to contain TSEs. But that was mostly before BSE was discovered and better understood. Since then, US officials have either prohibited certain parts of the cow (mostly the brain, eyes, and spinal tissue) from getting into the human food supply at all; or they have set rigid guidelines for whether a given suspicious cow should be allowed to be slaughtered in the first place. USDA procurement specifications for beef, for example, specifically prohibit the use of meat from downer animals, which are animals too sick or injured to walk. Read more about such safeguards here.

Advanced meat recovery (AMR) products, which are processed by removing muscle tissue without breaking bones; and which do not include spinal cord tissue are safer (but not the safest) types of red meat products. Read more about what is and isn't allowed in AMR product here.

The safest types of red meat products are those wherin the beef is not mechanically separated from bone with automatic deboning systems, AMR systems, or powered knives. In other words: Hand-butchered. And, of course, even if hand-butchered, brain, eye and spinal tissue must still be avoided.

Of course, the best way to ensure that one does not consume TSEs is to stop eating red meat or red meat byproducts altogether.

SOURCE INFO: The above contains both original writing, as well as selected passages compiled and copied-and-pasted directly from various US government and international health-related web site press releases which are intended for distribution and republication without attribution in order to get the word out to as many people as possible. In other words, whatever parts of the above aren't mine are in the public domain.

Hope that helps, Miguel! Eat that red meat as rare as you like... just don't eat cow brains, eyes or spinal cord. Mmmm!

 

mad tofu disease

Yes, Miguel, yo soy luterano--and I do mean soy!

Somehow, just now, I've lost my appetite entirely.

 

Tío, come tus vegetales y no te quejes. No dejes que un poco de carne cruda y sangre te intimide. Que el año nuevo sea de muchas bendiciones y te de mucha mas paciencia para lidiar con los retos que nos esperan.

 

see my sharp teeth

No, Miguel, it doesn't scare me at all. I'm veg strictly for medical reasons, and still nostalgic for the kibbeh nayeh of my childhood--and all bets are off in Chinese restaurants. There is a limit, after all.