BEEF BOYCOTT

FIGHT INFLATION TOGETHER (F.I.T.)
AMERICAN CONSUMERS TOGETHER (A.C.T.)
DON’T EAT BEEF - It just might save lives, especially yours and your family

I am not a vegetarian. It’s so hard, BUT we can give up beef. You can eat lamb, pork, poultry or fish. Your health will be the better for it by eating less read meat. The beef supply in this country is no longer safe for the following reasons:

1. As reported in the L.A. Times, "Federal regulations bar testing and detailed disclosure about recalls." Federal law trumps state laws and are the result of campaign contributions from the cattle industry.

2. Animals are not regularly tested. They should be from birth to death.

3. The U.S. Dept. of Agriculture entered a secret sweetheart agreement with cattle producers nationwide and the California State Regulators (Sept. 2002) to not disclose information as regards tainted meat and the stores and restaurants where it was sold. A dozen key cattle-raising states signed this agreement. In Oakland alone, five restaurants sold tainted soup -- they had not been notified of the recall. Dr Anthony Stowe, Alameda Community Health Office, was notified a month after the discovery. How many people ate or contracted the disease in that month? "Cover-up" is the law.

4. You can no longer trust the U.S.D.A. to protect the public. They do not regulate industry as originally conceived --to protect against perils to the food supply. Today, they are there to protect profits and, if need be, at our expense. WHAT KIND OF PEOPLE WOULD DO THIS TO US?

Secretary of Agriculture, Earl Butz, said I had organized 90% of the people and we brought prices down drastically over 6 years. Richard Nixon followed by putting on price controls. I have been successful with a meat boycott in 1973. Together we showed people power and our ability to organize that hadn’t been done since Tom Paine wrote Common Sense and started the American Revolution. Use your buying power to democratically and nonviolently get what we want!

The Mad Cow disease in man, Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (CJD), has an incubation period of as much as 10 years. It may be some time before we know who has already been affected.

Does the discovery of only two cows in the US. mean that the rest of the supply is contaminated? Possibly. Much is unknown. Did the two cows have offspring and grandchildren? What happened to them?

Conjecture leads experts to believe that Mad Cow Disease was acquired in feed containing contaminated animal parts. How many other ranches were supplied this feed? It strains credulity to think that feed was sent to only one ranch or that there was only one manufacturer putting animal parts into feed. Where did the diseased animals parts in the feed come from? Cattlemen lobbied for years to be allowed to inject animal parts in feed destined for bovines who, by nature, are vegetarians. The government gave them what they wanted.

THE BEST WAY TO PROTECT you, your children and your grandchildren’s futures is to put maximum pressure on the President, Congress, the legislatures, and the U.S.D.A., thus creating a groundswell of support for testing and full and unvarnished disclosure.

DON’T EAT BEEF -- AND WHEN PROFITS DISAPPEAR THEY WILL LISTEN TO US .

ARLINE MATHEWS
CHAIRPERSON, F.I.T./A.C.T.

co-founder of 1973 nationwide meat boycott