From: Dawn M. Lauryn [dawn@neurotronics.com]
Sent: Thursday, November 21, 2002 2:35 PM
To: FDADockets@oc.fda.gov
Subject: DOCKET #98P-0151/CP1

U.S. Food and Drug Administration
Dockets Management Brach
5630 fishers Lane, Room 1061
Rockville, MD 20852
fax: 301-827-6870
email: FDADockets@oc.fda.gov

DOCKET #98P-0151/CP1

To Whom It May Concern, 



I hope this email is not too late!



This is a sample letter that I was emailed, and I agree with it wholeheartedly! Please protect the human population! Read on to find out how:



U.S. Food and Drug Administration:

Please grant petition 98P-0151/CP1 to ban the slaughter of downed animals for human consumption. I understand the FDA has received over 33,000 comments in favor of this long overdue regulation. Animal cruelty and human health risks are simply not worth the profit derived from keeping sick animals alive to process them into food. 

Downed animals contain bacterial contamination. Evidence suggests that they have a strain of BSE (Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy), or Mad Cow Disease. This disease is linked with the deadly human variant, Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease.

Nevertheless, diseased animals are an ordinary sight at stockyards across the U.S. Downed animals are too ill or injured to move, eat or drink. As their internal organs slowly shut down, tractors and forklifts drag them on to piles of other dying animals. At a Stephenville, Texas stockyard, a calf was photographed struggling to stand upon three legs while the bottom portion of his mangled fourth leg hung by a shred of hide and ligament.

Cows with broken bones are routinely pulled over rough cement. Pigs, sheep and goats languish on the ground with gaping wounds. At a Longview, Texas stockyard, investigators observed a frail goat, "hog-tied" with duct tape and thrown onto the back of a pick-up truck. Downed animals are considered living trash.  

I am appalled that the livestock industry and its Congressional backup continue to overshadow all legislative decisions regarding the humane treatment of animals. In secluded committee deliberations, Texas Congressmen successfully stripped provisions in the Farm Bill that would have prevented downed animal suffering.

According to Congressman Gary Ackerman, "The transport and marketing of these incapacitated animals creates tremendous human health concerns as well as humane concerns...Not to euthanize them just because then they couldn't be marketed for human consumption, is indeed a sin." I stand behind Congressman Ackerman's words and ask the FDA to immediately prohibit the slaughter of downed animals for human food.

Thank you,



Ms. Dawn M. Lauryn, Office Manager 
Neurotronics, Inc. 
102 NE 10th Avenue, Suite 5 
Gainesville, FL 32601 
Tel (352) 372-9955, Fax (352) 373-7074 
dawn@neurotronics.com