Mad Cowboys

"You said [mad cow disease] could make AIDS look like the common cold?" asked TV talk show host Oprah Winfrey. "Absolutely," said her guest, Howard Lyman of the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS). "That's an extreme statement, you know," Winfrey said. "Absolutely," Lyman said again. "A hundred thousand cows per year in the United States are fine at night, dead in the morning. The majority of those cows are rounded up, ground up, fed back to other cows. If only one of them has mad cow disease, it has the potential to affect thousands."

After hearing a bit more of what Lyman, a former Montana rancher who now represents HSUS' Eating With a Conscience Campaign, had to say about the danger of mad cow disease coming across the Atlantic from England, Winfrey was convinced. "It has just stopped me cold from eating another burger," she said. "I'm stopped!"

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