Reading an AP article  about the California dairy cow that was discovered to have Mad Cow disease yesterday makes me appreciative I am a vegan.

According to the Article: “The cow had died at one of the region’s hundreds of dairies, but hadn’t exhibited outward symptoms of the disease: unsteadiness, incoordination, a drastic change in behavior or low milk production, officials said. But when the animal arrived at the facility with a truckload of other dead cows on April 18, its 30-month-plus age and fresh corpse made her eligible for USDA testing.”

Arrived at the facility with a truckload of other dead cows.  How sad and disgusting and disrespectful.  The article continues:

“We randomly pick a number of samples throughout the year, and this just happened to be one that we randomly sampled,” Baker Commodities executive vice president Dennis Luckey said. “It showed no signs” of disease.

His name says it all … “Luckey”.  Lucky for consumers. Over the next few weeks and months the animal agriculture industry will carefully position its statements to make consumers feel at ease and that this was just an isolated incident.  The USDA and animal food industry will try to convince consumers that the system worked and they protected us.  Well, I for one don’t have the same level of faith in the food industry that they might like us to have and that was one of the reasons I went vegan.  John Robbins pointed this out in his book, Diet for a New America. I encourage you to read it and find out why the son of the Baskin-Robins ice cream empire gave up the family fortune, largely because of the belief that the system of animal agriculture in the United States is corrupt. 

If you are curious about going vegan, here’s a great starting point for preparing delicious vegan meals which are similar to what you might be used to eating.  The new book is Vegan Cooking for Carnivores by Roberto Martin.

I saw Roberto Martin on the Ellen DeGeneres show and was delighted by his humor and approach to creating great tasting vegan meals that anyone would love.  Apparently he’s been a personal chef for Ellen and Portia de Rossi and has catered events for them as well.