Agree, Dale.  Dean may be a smart guy (?) but he sure put his foot in his mouth.

Also, the Mad Cow thing has nothing to do with what he's rambling on about.  The reason the thing developed in the first place is because the beef industry here, in keeping profits ahead of prudence, did not discontinue feeding animal parts to the cattle in recycled feed.  This practice was discontinued in Germany and England soon after the Mad Cow scare over there, so now at least there are no new infected cattle in Europe (although the fallout from the disease will not be fully known in the human population for another 20 years or so; so far 100 cases can be traced to their mad cow source).  However, even with that knowledge the beef industry failed to stop the practice here.  As you probably know, the disease is due to a "prion" (derived from "proteinaceous infective" agent).  It is concentrated in nervous tissue, so if spinal cord, brain etc..are consumed by the cattle, they can become infected.  

Gene