This is not a joke - Suspected mad cow case detected, CFIAsays

[ALICIA]

BEZ= I know what you mean, One night at the sale barn soom dairy cattle came throught and your right they shouldn't even be their. I cryed they looked so bad, they had sores on elbows, heals, hips and they sold for 19 cents a pound. This was just last year. Then my 4 year old Hereford came in the sale. She weighted 1785 and I got 19.5 cents. You can just bet that she never made it to beef, she was a cull because she started to prolaps on me, so who ever bought her to put a cheep cow in their herd is in for a big vet bill.
Most beef cull are in great shape when they go for beef, and I agree any dairy cow that is down in weight and can hardly walk because they have stood in a bale most of their life has no bisness going through the sale barn so that the general puplic can see them, they should be taken right to dead stock, and for a small fee dead stock will come and shot the animal and take her away.
Did you also notice that when they where talking about another case that most of the cattle they showed on TV where beef cattle and the general public doesn't know a beef animal from a dairy animal.
I think that all sale barns should hold at least 2 sales a week. They should specify that one sale is for dairy and one sale is for beef. The puplic should be made aware of the differences in the two types of animals and at the dairy sale if some dairy animals are fit to go in the food chain then fine but at least the difference in animals will be seen.
The dairy guys get paid for milk and their cattle have know busness being in a sale that sells beef cattle. Selling meat is our busness and that is what our cattle are for beef and dairy culls should be sold at a dairy sale or shipped to the rendering plant if they look bad. Maybe that is one of the reasons that beef in the stores is expensive, ever try to but wieght on a dairy cow, and from what I've seen most a just bones.

[ALICIA]

I think it is time that all producers of cattle realized that we have to deal with our culls in a different way, particularily those that are in very poor condition or sick. Perhaps even with the border opening the 4D program should continue for all cattle, both dairy and beef. Better to get those cows out of the system and tested.

[rkaiser]

Yeah emerald, tested and sold. I think it's a crying shame to throw perfectly good beef away, when we could be running a BSE test, and then selling the product for human consumption. Of course there are those downers, and cows that have gone too far, but those numbers don't add up to much. We always have sent those ones to the happy grazing pasture in the sky in the past; what's to stop that?

I have never sold a down cow for slaughter in my life, in fact most get the bullet before they ever reach that stage. But limpy cows, prolapses, bad feet, etc., have a place in the food chain in my mind.

[cowman]

I suppose if the government was willing to pay a good price for over thirty month old cattle, then I'd be all for incinerating them or whatever...like the UK did? The problem here is our cheapo government would probably want the cow/calf guy to pay the whole shot so the consumer could feel safe. In reality if we can't get anything for our culls then the cattle business is toast?
I wonder just how much a Big Mac or a beef sub would cost? I suspect Mc Chicken could become very popular?

[cowman]

rkaiser, you and I would never ship a downer cow, but there are those that have in the past, to get whatever they can for the animal. If the 4D program is kept in place those animals would at least be tested and the producer would get a few bucks for them, and at least they could be dispatched humanely without being loaded and hauled to some facility .

[intr3est]

I'll make a comment here, and I'm not sure it will be read, because this thread is older. If we were not shipping cull cattle for beef, wouldn't we get paid more for the good "stuff".? Leave the shit in the yard or at least take it to the field and incorporate it!