Cow on the Run
The Mad Cow Remembrance Society (MCRS) is not a happy organization. Based
in Roundthrorten, England and funded by donations from concerned citizens,
MCRS was established in 1991 to distribute information about mad cow
disease. Founder Bertha Horsham fondly recalls the days the “disease was
raging and her phone was ringing off the hook.”
She kept body counts of slaughtered cows and even estimated the tonnage of
meat that was incinerated. She developed a test by which the average person
could estimate his chances of being stricken. Questions such as, do you
sleep with cows, eat raw meat, collect cow “pies” or engage in the cow
toss, were not received warmly by the medical community or the British
government which tried to silence her under the Official Secrets Act. But
Ms. Horsham stood her ground and became something of a tabloid celebrity.
The mainstream press considered her a little potty and suggested her
prediction that the British race would become extinct by 2009 because of
the disease was simply alarmist. She has since backed off this prediction
because, in her words “the British public is much more stubborn that I
thought.”
The stubborn British public is not her only problem. More devastating to
Ms. Horsham is that mad cow disease is no longer a front page item in the
UK. Indeed, sometimes it receives no mention at all. She was understandably
furious when foot-and-mouth disease--”an upstart, panty-waist disease if
I’ve ever seen one”--roared into the headlines, further displacing mad cow
from the British consciousness. Ms Horsham is not quick to claim conspiracy
but thinks “there is something fishy about the onset of a disease that in
China would be little more than a pimple on a pig’s behind.”
Bertha Horsham believes contemporary society is much more comfortable
dealing with slight diseases such as foot-and-mouth or the common cold than
mad cow which had all the early marking of a plague--and still does in
Bertha’s opinion. “We want quick fixes in the West,” she remarked. “It’s
the antibiotic thing. We want to get rid of diseases fast so we can get
ready for the weekend.”
She is convinced that mad cow disease is still as prevalent as it was in
the early 1990s but the people and the press are simply sick of it. And mad
cow has responded, in her opinion, by going underground and “waiting for
the opportune time to raise its head again like an ugly carbuncle.”
“Mark my words,” she says, “the cow will have the last laugh. The British
government thinks it can rid the nation of disease by slaughtering millions
of cows. This is a joke. Mad cow is now in our soil, hearts and soul. Over
the years we have committed a grave sin against cows by feeding them to
each other. This was a sin against the natural order and the Cow God
demands retribution.
“You can burn a billion cow carcasses but you won’t eliminate mad cow
disease until you purify people’s hearts with fire. People have to
sacrifice to the Cow God if they want to be saved and their children
spared.”
The Roundthrorten Mirror, a local newspaper, has accused Ms. Horsham of
wrapping the mad cow scare in “Christian theology and country witchcraft
with the sole intention of making money off this still dreaded disease.”
“Nonsense,” Ms. Horsham responds,” any historian worth her salt knows that
the Black Plague did not end until the restitution of society through
appropriate tithes, donations, and ablutions. We must remember that mad cow
disease is a malady of the human spirit as much as the cow carcass.
Frankly, I think there is more madness in human beings than in the cows we
sacrificed for our sins. If I had my way, half the British population would
have gone the way of the cow.”
Reminded that the European Union has laws against such practices Ms.
Horsham responded that ‘Europe had no right to call the kettle black.”
She is accepting donations at madcowbertha@nexis.co.uk
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