Dead dog floors 68 Namibian villagers Sixty-eight people from two Namibian villages ended up in hospital after "eating a dog that had died of disease", The Namibian reports. Said mutt from Oikokola in the Omusati region was killed by its owner last Saturday after falling ill, and he duly ordered the carcass to be incinerated. However, the good burghers of Oikokola …
If you saw the dog die, so you know the meat is fresh, and you cooked it properly, why should there be a problem? (Unless the dog was ill because it had consumed some poison that is not destroyed by heat, which you might be able to rule out if you kept an eye on the dog or there are no such poisons in use in the village.)
And why the hell should animal rights campaigners object to people eating dogs?
Personally, I'm a vegetarian, but if people are going to eat pigs, why shouldn't they eat dogs?
> people continue to enjoy its delights, despite animal rights campaigners' objections
What the hell business is it of animal rights campaigners? What country are these idiots from? Okay I have had dogs as pets and I would not want to have eaten any of my pets, but what rights to dogs have over your average pig/cow/sheep/goat that is kept to provide a few meals at some point in the future?
"eating a dog that had died of disease" or "was killed by its owner last Saturday after falling ill". So was the owner the disease? Maybe it just had a cold, no lemslip for you doggy, it's shovel time. Sensitive owner.
It fed a good number of people anyway. They would have only got a nut sized bit each though. Hummmm.... dog nuts.
There's a lot of news stories at the moment here in France about people (including 19-month-old toddlers) being killed by dogs, mostly Rottweilers and similar breeds.
There's yer Paris angle, innit?
If these people are quite happy to eat dogs, by all means let them. Send them more of these bloody testicle-enhancement canines while they're at it.
"If you saw the dog die, so you know the meat is fresh, and you cooked it properly, why should there be a problem? (Unless the dog was ill because it had consumed some poison that is not destroyed by heat, which you might be able to rule out if you kept an eye on the dog or there are no such poisons in use in the village.)"
Please, in the name of god, tell me you will never ever ever EVER offer to cook (even vegetarian) food for anyone ever. You wouldn't just get drummed out of a food hygiene course for asking this, you'd probably get chopped up, cooked, and eaten for asking it.
Anyway, the main problem is that the kinds of toxins that bacteria pump out are made out of the same kind of stuff (it's called "protein", do read a book one day) as the meat itself. So even basic reasoning skills should let you see that if the meat isn't "destroyed" by the heat of cooking, there's no reason why the bad stuff left in it by the germs should be. (It takes 300 degrees C to completely destroy protein, but you didn't need to know that: all you needed was the common sense to observe that the germs and the meat are made of the same kind of stuff).
After all, what exactly do you think "fresh" means in terms of meat (or any other food), and what exactly do you think is going on when it rots? If it's full of germs and their byproducts, why would you call that "fresh" just because they got into the flesh before it died rather than afterward?
If anyone can answer that question alone, right there, then regardless of IT angle, the Reg would have solved one of the biggest problems in western "culture" today.
food for thought....err...
Difference between an "activist" and a "meddler/terrorist/fundamentalist/Bush supporter"?
The "activist" is the one the socialists and left leaning media like. Or who are supported by their preferred political party. It has nothing to do with the actual cause or actions taken.
Case in point, "women's rights" activists who campaigned and sent "speakers" into Arab countries to meet in secret and agitate to change the culture to benefit women. Doing whatever they felt necessary to topple the pre existing culture, working for noble goals like democracy and getting women to vote.
Now, what does the Media call it when a Republican administration works to allow suppressed people to vote, and works to set up democracy? "Invasion" in some cases, and in others, "Forcing Western Cultural Values".
Same activity (in non-military venues), same objective, different players, and completely opposite tone from the "hearts and minds" controlling media outlets.
Maybe while "activists" force them to give up a non Western food stock, we could make sure their industry never evolves, to cut down on Carbon Emissions...and we could keep them from using effective pesticides based on ill informed Western prejudices, and kill off thousands of children that way. Even taking the completely false and propaganda-inflated numbers of deaths in Iraq, liberal "Activists" have killed many, many more innocents than in the biggest Blackwater managed nightmares.
They have the right to their own political beliefs, to express them and to campaign for them. It's a little thing called democracy. If you don't like it, you're free to leave and go live somewhere more to your tastes. I hear Burma is nice round this time of year.
>Difference between an "activist" and a "meddler/terrorist/fundamentalist/Bush supporter"?
Activists campaign for their beliefs and try to change the public will by persuasion. The other guys drop bombs on people and kill them. It has everything to do with "the actions taken".
So are Animal Welfare campaigners that bomb research institutes, threaten workers at said institutes and dig up bodies of deceased relatives of said workers - activists or terrorists?
Where does the line between persuasion and terrorism begin?
@ Slappy
Thats the best laugh I've had all week!! Thanks!! :D
The dog was deceased it was a dead dog euthanized as it had a disease now two things you should know this kind of behaviour is getting Africans killed a lot the bushmeat trade has started every epidemic of Ebola they have had they find dead primates haven't got enough sense to leave them alone they eat them and die of what the monkey died of I guess stinky rotten meat with maggots doesn't effect some Africans but Ebola does and so will many other diseases too numerous to mention and too disgusting to contemplate not sure what can be done about it but if they want to live they have to stop eating diseased meat.
@Anon Coward
I'm guessing that you have taken a food hygiene course because the crap you've written is about the level of the misinformation which springs from this type of course and is passed on to the public through dumbed-down TV cooking programmes and the like.
Let's take a look at:
"Anyway, the main problem is that the kinds of toxins that bacteria pump out are made out of the same kind of stuff (it's called "protein", do read a book one day) as the meat itself."
The most common bacterial (not germ, please) toxin is lipopolysaccahride (LPS), this isn't a protein. Sorry. However, I will grant you that some other bacterial (not germ) toxins are proteins eg botulinum toxin and a number grouped as enterotoxins.
"So even basic reasoning skills should let you see that if the meat isn't "destroyed" by the heat of cooking, there's no reason why the bad stuff left in it by the germs should be."
Wrong. Lay people are often confused on this. There is a difference between being destroyed beyond recognition (TV cooks and food hygienists refer to this as burnt) and being biologically inactivated or denatured as scientists call it. Most proteins are denatured at temps well below 100C. Good example which TV cooks and food hygienists might understand is egg white which is mostly a protein called albumin. This is denatured around 60C which TV cooks and food hygienists recognise as the clear white of an egg going opaque when they cook it. Hint: try cooking an egg in water less than boiling, it just takes longer.
Maybe you should try reading some books beyond Janet and John.
And before you ask: Doctorate in microbial biochemistry
Steve
Remember where this took place - rural Namibia, where the tribespeople would have virtually no education, no concept of where disease comes from and little or no concept of hygiene. Health care is close to non-existant - except for bush clinics and the odd charity doctors rounds. Chances are the people are also subsistence farmers.
Meat is meat.It's for eating.
Animals have no rights - except to try and run away. That's the way life is there. Accept it and stop bleating from your comfortable western homes. The people in rural Namibia are still living in mud huts, cooking on open fires and using the bush for toilets. Women work hard, pregnant ones work hard up until the moment of birth, have the baby and then get back to work - no lying around in hospital for a few days 'recovering'.
Chances are that eating dogs that have died of disease is a common event. Just this time it didn't work. It won't change, but the world jumps on it as a major event. Understand what's happening there and stop moralising or judging from a western viewpoint!
"...main problem...toxins that bacteria pump out are made out...protein...as the meat itself... So...if the meat isn't "destroyed" by the heat of cooking, there's no reason why the bad stuff left in it by the germs should be. (It takes 300 degrees C to completely destroy protein..."
The first problem with your scornful little tirade is that the main problem in bacterial food poisoning isn't usually the toxin produced by the bacteria in the food, but the bacteria itself reaching the consumer in a large enough dose to reproduce in the gut and make its own fresh batch of poison. Cooked (i.e. grey) meat has been heated enough to kill the majority of breeds of bacteria that can infect mammals.
The second problem is that protein does not need to be "destroyed" to be made inactive. Proteins, as you'd know if you'd read anything about them, require specific ways of folding their polypeptide strings into precise shapes to retain their activity. The process of breaking this folding up is called denaturing and is one of the processes which occurs in, would you believe, cooking meat and killing bacteria. There are some toxic proteins, the botulinum toxin being one, which can survive high temperatures (up to about 120C for botulinum) but that's generated by an anaerobic bacterium which can't have been present in any large quantities in the flesh of a living beast; it's a phenomenon largely restricted to canned food that's not been properly boiled.
"After all, what exactly do you think 'fresh' means in terms of meat..."
Largely, it means that the fatty bits haven't started to oxidise (go 'rancid'), that it hasn't been colonised by other opportunistic organisms like moulds, bacteria and flies.
"If it's full of germs and their byproducts, why would you call that "fresh" just because they got into the flesh before it died rather than afterward?"
You eat chicken, at all? Eggs? Soft cheese? Milk? Better be sure it's properly cooked or pasteurised unless you know the source is properly free of disease.
Overall, you're right. It's probably really dim to eat (and potentially criminal to offer for consumption) meat from an animal that died (or was moribund) from a disease. But your explanation of the mechanisms and reasoning behind that are inaccurate and don't support your scornful attitude.
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