So, what's in that Big Mac?

Well, a Big Mac has beef patties in it. Beef patty comes from cow meat.

Recently, McDonald's and other critics have come forward to say safeguards are not effective enough to prevent the spread of mad cow disease. Let's take a look at the problem. Seems there is lots of questionable stuff that goes into cattle feed that can pass along mad cow disease, including:

• cow brains and spinal columns (now removed to stop mad cow disease spread)
• cow eyeball and intestine
• other dead cow meat
• poultry litter (this is a nice way of saying chicken shit)*
• poultry blood (collected when chickens are slaughtered)*
• restaurant plate waste

The problem is that any of these can pass along mad cow disease to the cow from the cattle feed it eats and then possibly pass Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (rare but fatal) to the human who eats meat from that cow.

Ok, let's forget about the mad cow disease - Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease link and just think about the old addage "you are what you eat" and how it passes down the food chain from the cattle feed to the cow to you. Something to consider next time you bite into your Big Mac. Meanwhile I'll have the veggie burger, thanks.

[*] These items in cattle feed are particularly ironic when you think about the "Eat Mor Chikin" ad campaign from Chick-fil-A. Turns out the cows are the one's eating chicken, chicken shit mixed with some blood that is.