Where do the buffalo roam? New Hampshire, of course.

[Unstuck In Time]

While I think the religious trappings are a bit much, I do like the idea of the buffalo as a means of being a bit more in harmony with the planet. The article (below) points out that buffalo just don't need the antibiotics, manufactured feed and all the other crud that goes along with mega-feed-lot cattle production. I view it as a another form of organic farming -- something that has saved an awful lot of family farms here in New England.

Symbol and sustenance
Buffalo revived as food source, steward of land

By Jack Encarnacao, Boston Globe Correspondent | October 25, 2004

HILLSBOROUGH, N.H. -- Justin Mudgett eats buffalo meat in dinner casseroles, wears buffalo bones as necklaces, and spins buffalo hides and fur into warm clothing.

He is a buffalo farmer who has tapped into a lucrative market that is breeding thousands of the animals in New England. But Mudgett is also a Native American who says his involvement with the buffalo is more than a business: He is trying to revive the harmony between man and beast that characterized his ancestors' lifestyle.

"I'm trying to bring the Native American back into bison farming," said Mudgett, who can trace his ancestry to the Penobscot tribe of Maine.

http://www.boston.com/news/local/new_hampshire/articles/2004/10/25/symbol_and_sustenance/

[Kali]

1. Just a quick FYI

Domestic cattle don't need that crap either and similarly if you tried to feed lot buffalo (bison) or any other critters they WOULD need it. The problem I see coming is intensive FARMING of Bison will lead to the same situation. These kinds of animals do best out free ranging as they evolved.

I raise livestock and we don't use any of those products.

[Village Idiot]

2. Aren't buffalo just as likely

(or more so) to suffer from CWD as deer/antelope? There is no testing being done for this, and it amounts to the same thing as CJD, since it is fatal in humans...

[Unstuck In Time]

4. I dunno. Anybody? n/t

[bemildred]

5. I googled around for it and found nothing.

On that negative evidence I would suggest it is not an
issue with Buffalo yet, and possible not at all. Prion
diseases are funny. Pigs don't get it either. Have some
bacon?

[Dogmudgeon]

6. CWD is not CJD

There is even some controversy about whether CWD is a prion disease (though I agree it probably is).

In addition, there is no evidence that humans can develop CWD. The CDC and other scientific organizations are studying it, but nothing so far has turned up.

I'm confident that if CWD is found to be harmful or lethal to humans, we'll hear all about it within hours.

--bkl

[Kali]

8. Chronic Wasing Disease

seems to affect Arteriodactyls, though the causitive agent may be similar to the cause of Human CJD and BovineSpongiform Encephalitis and scrapie in sheep.

I recently recieved some interesting information about this if anybody want to get more technical send me a pm.

[Unstuck In Time]

3. Do you consider your cattle organic?

It's a good point you make -- the "mass production" in a relatively small space is where things begin to break down.

[Kali]

7. Yes

They are not fed grain, supplemented with anything other than salt and occasionally a mineral mix, not implanted with growth hormones or other stimulants etc. Just raised on open country on grass and forbs and browse grown from sunlight and rain, not with petrochemicals. Now to be honest, we don't market meat ourselves, though if somebody wants to deal with us we are sure happy to go that way (we have our own meat in the freezer, but I am not much of a marketing person). I know several local ranchers who are into marketing themselves, but we generally sell to the "system" - our main "product, unfortunatly goes on to the feedlot system.