Category: Pet Q&A’s

Question

I see the term blackleg come up often when people talk about vaccinating livestock. They also mention BRD a lot too, which is like pneumonia. These cattle farmers are insistent that they must use the immunizations to prevent the loss of the animals. So why does this work in cattle? The 1st seems to be spore-related and carried until a minor injury turns the muscle into a feast for a toxic soup-creating bacteria. The 2nd seems to be commonly, possibly caused by stress… but stress alone can’t create the disease of mucus-filled lungs. How would the terrain model explain these claims?

Answer

Whenever we are looking at a medical label blaming bacteria or viruses for disease there are always clues that point to the answers we seek within the medical literature narrative that can help us see through the false science, misconstrued, misinterpreted, or misinformed opinions, and sales pitches and get a clearer picture of what is actually happening.

Here is one source that we can look at for clues – Blackleg: A Preventable Disease of Cattle from the West Virginia University Extension

As usual, they have the fearmongering statements “Clostridium bacteria have developed the ability to survive extreme environmental conditions by developing into highly resistant spores. As spores, the bacterium can live in soil for many years, waiting for its opportunity to strike and infect a host.”

The Bacteria is present in healthy animals without causing infection

Looking at this first one, we can see that the spores are present with no negative impact on the cattle and can live in the soil for many years, which means hundreds, if not thousands of cattle are exposed to them, but only a some of the cattle suddenly start dying from the bacteria according to the medical literature.

Here is another confirmation”If sheep or cattle have ever grazed the land you are currently pasturing, it is most likely you have the Clostridium chauvoei spores.”

A Narrow “Infection” Window

“It is not uncommon for prime blackleg conditions to affect an area for a period of 10 days.”

So beyond 10 days the bacteria suddenly becomes inert and not harmful? It’s everywhere that cows or sheep have grazed previously, thousands of cattle are exposed to it with no health issues. This is the same pattern used to blame e-coli, MRSA, tetanus, etc in humans when these bacteria are found in all healthy humans.

It’s highly unlikely that the material would only become harmful within such a narrow scope, but perhaps we can find a more rational explanation within the article for why a cow would succumb within 10 days of injury.

“It is not entirely understood what causes the bacteria to proliferate, but one theory is muscle bruising associated with handling and shipping may be a major cause. “

“There are several signs and symptoms an infected animal will exhibit, including lameness, loss of appetite, depression, rapid breathing, fever and swelling. Sometimes the animal will appear lame on the affected leg before any other sign is noticed.”

When these cattle are transported they are crammed into metal trailers and very often become injured. Since the cattle are fed a completely unnatural diet, and raised on pastures that are abused and devoid of nutrition, they start out very weak. The cows are given a wide range of toxic injections and supplements, and antibiotics are fed “preventatively” leading to a chronic state of disease from birth to slaughter. The pastures are often planted with only one or two grasses, which are chosen to maximize short-term weight gain, not nutrition. All of these conditions lead to an animal that is not in a good condition to recover should they experience a traumatic injury.

In chicken farming, they feed the birds a feed that makes them grow so heavy in such a short period of time that it is common for the bird’s legs to break under their own weight. In cattle, we see the same pattern of fattening for the fastest return on investment leading to bodies that grow rapidly, but not strong. No care is given to the animal’s nutrition because the cattle farmer only cares about getting them to maximum weight as quickly as possible, they don’t care about their long-term health. They have no desire to allow the animal to live to its natural life span, so there is no incentive to feed them properly for longevity.

Poor Nutrition leads to weak bodies that easily succumb to injury

Most people recognize that livestock that live in a feedlot system are getting very poor nutrition and a stressful life with little care for their wellbeing. However, we tend to get the false impression that “grass-fed” cows are getting good nutrition and living naturally. This is the furthest thing from the truth. A grass pasture is just a field the farmer has planted with rye, wheat, or other grasses. In nature, cows would eat flowers, shrubs, fruit, legumes, clover, wild herbs, and a wide variety of greens and grasses that would be growing next to each other on wide tracts of natural land. Grass-fed cows are fed a mono-crop or possible a small mix of grasses, flowers and legumes in a small grass field. In nature they would not be limited to a few high-protein grasses selectively chosen for maximum weight gain. In nature, they would grow slowly and naturally. On a farm the goal is to get them fattened for sale or slaughter as quickly as possible to maximize profit.

A “grass-fed” cow is the equivalent of a McDonald’s fed child. A body that has been fed poor nutrition is far more likely to succumb to an injury than a body that is strong and has the materials needed to heal properly.

So we have an animal that is severely injured during transportation and then dumped into a field that offers no rest and little nutrition, likely they are also given their preventative antibiotics (poison) and supplements (poison) because the grass field is lacking in many of the natural materials they need. As a result, the conditions of health are not being provided and therefore we cannot expect the body to heal in effective way and we can expect many of these cows to succumb to injuries which would not be fatal in a healthy animal but becomes the straw that breaks the camels back in these weak mis-fed animals.

Why do the injections appear to work?

Using the same article as above –  Blackleg: A Preventable Disease of Cattle from the West Virginia University Extension

We start with the sales pitch, the favorite of the industry is the “better safe than sorry”, “we offer the solution for very cheap so make sure you use the prevention.” Here it is in the article: “It is a very inexpensive insurance policy to protect animals with vaccination. Most blackleg products will cost producers approximately $1.20 to $1.60 per head, plus the cost of labor, depending on the product used.”

In the disease-for-profit industry, they have inbuilt protections to keep their system running. Hundreds of thousands of different disease labels for a small number of symptoms. A set of symptoms can point to one of 10, 20, or 100 different disease labels, but the presence of any particular bacteria or virus is the definitive factor that provides the specific diagnosis in many diseases.

The way a vaccine works is you give it long before any symptoms are apparent and you give it en masse to thousands or hundreds of thousands of victims.

“Vaccines are very effective if given to young, healthy animals in time for them to increase their immunity before being challenged by the disease.”

Since most of the victims would never acquire the disease in the first place you simply credit the vaccine for the lack of symptoms rather than the statistical norm that already existed prior to the invention of the vaccine. Now all the animals that never would have gotten the “disease” in the first place we are told only didn’t get it because they were vaccinated and therefore protected from it.

Then when inevitably symptoms arise in some of the animals or humans that match the disease that the vaccine is supposed to protect for, they simply change the disease label. In humans, we vaccinated for polio, and then anyone who got the symptoms associated with polio from being exposed to a neurotoxin but is vaccinated, they are now diagnosed with transverse myelitis, guillain-barre, spinal cord stroke, meningitis, brainstem stroke, botulism, or other medical labels instead of polio. Polio is ruled out because they were vaccinated for polio already. Instead a different label is chosen. In areas where the vaccine was not given en masse, they are still given a polio label and we rarely see the other diagnosis labels being used.

You see, if an animal has been vaccinated for a particular disease then that by default removes that disease from the diagnosis choices the vet is choosing from and they choose another label instead. Plenty of labels are available to diagnose the same limited spectrum of symptoms, so it’s easy to simply relabel.

In this case, “C septicum, C novyi, C sordellii, and C perfringens may resemble those of blackleg.” and malignant edema, tetanus, enterotoxemia, red water, and botulism all share the same symptoms and can be used as an alternative diagnosis.

But to add a further level of protection for the narrative we are also told “calves vaccinated under three months of age must be vaccinated again at weaning or at four to six months of age to be protected.” and ” Animals must be vaccinated annually.”

So if the vet wants to diagnose blackleg they can also claim that the farmer did not vaccinate enough times.

“Delaying vaccination until a calf is older can be inviting disaster” -Source: Alabama Cooperative Extension article Blackleg and Other Clostridial Diseases in Cattle

The industry sales materials always have the call to urgency and the moral imperative – if the farmer does not vaccinate they are “inviting disaster” and being neglectful and abusive. This type of social pressure helps keep questioning to a minimum – no one wants to be labeled abusive or neglectful so “just to be safe” they inject the poison.

“Intramuscular injection of clostridial vaccines causes significant muscle damage and, therefore, clostridial vaccines must be injected under the skin (subcutaneously or SQ) in the neck area. This will prevent injection-site damage to high-value cuts of meat.“

The result of “just to be safe” is “significant muscle damage” but that is socially acceptable because it is a result of medical “care” which is deemed necessary and appropriate as long as its not in the high value cuts of meat.

Bovine Respiratory Disease

“Bovine Respiratory Disease (BRD), sometimes described as “shipping fever,” is the most common and costly disease affecting the North American beef cattle industry.” “BRD refers to any disease of the upper or lower respiratory tracts”

Here the cause is right in the description, “shipping fever”. The extremely high stress the cattle are under during shipping leads to many of the cattle developing detox symptoms after the ordeal.

Symptoms of BRD in cattle:
Fever (up to 42°C)
Watery nasal discharge progressing to a thick mucoid nasal discharge.
Depression and lethargy.
Lack of appetite.
Cough.
Rapid, shallow breathing.
Unwillingness to move, standing with neck extended.

All of the above are detox symptoms. This is the body’s natural healing and repair processes being instituted as a result of exposure to toxins or stress. When an animal or human is under high levels of stress this creates an overacid condition of the body due to the overworking of the cells. All disease is a result of the overworking of the cells, so stress, especially prolonged stress can certainly result in detox symptoms.

In humans, prolonged stress results in cold or flu symptoms, which are detox symptoms, also known as a healing crisis. In cattle, the medical industry has labeled this collection of healing symptoms as BRD just like they have labeled the symptoms pneumonia, flu, or cold in humans. It’s the same process just with different labels depending on who invents the label first.

However, there are some caveats to stress creating these symptoms. Under normal conditions in a healthy body the body would quickly eliminate the results of the stress in the body and no lasting symptoms would occur. If anything the symptoms would be minor. In a body that is misfed, however, the body is already under a chronic burden and is unable to rapidly eliminate byproducts of stress. The body is dehydrated and as such the lymphatic system is backed up and moving more slowly than it would naturally. This results in slower elimination of waste products and therefore more damage at the site of the cells when the waste is not able to be rapidly eliminated from the area. Therefore, a normal condition that a healthy body would rapidly eliminate with minimal symptoms becomes a major issue with major symptoms and discomfort for a body that has been chronically misfed and poisoned.

On top of this, if the care given to the animal is rest, fasting, clean water, and species-appropriate food that provides the highest quality nutrition then the body will recover rapidly. If the opposite is done, if the animal is applied with poisons and force-fed, not allowed proper rest, and not provided with the needs of health, then the symptoms will linger, the elimination will drag on and the symptoms may worsen depending on the amount of poisons applied to the body by the medical person in charge of their care.

As with any condition of disease, we cannot poison a poisoned body back to health. Stress creates poisonous conditions, and the body responds to these poisonous conditions by creating expulsion symptoms, the medical industry responds to the body healing expulsion symptoms by applying additional poisons in the way of antibiotics, supplements, and other symptom suppressants, attempting to poison away the symptoms which were brought on by the initial poisoning.

If the body survives the initial poisoning and the secondary poisoning the medical poisons are touted as the savior. If the animal succumbs to the secondary poisons the body’s healing processes are blamed for the death rather than the poisons. The explanation always protects the profits of the disease-for-profit industry.