wither in the light

Alton Brown, the 'Good Eats' chef from an alternate universe where Thomas Dolby made pies instead of music, has some interesting things to say about the most recent outbreak of mad cow disease (bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or 'BSE'):

That's right - you and I are to blame for the fact that hundreds if not thousands of animals will have to be destroyed because of the threat of BSE. We are to blame because our culture has come to value two qualities above all else: 'cheap', and 'more'. How else can you explain the cancerous creep of Wal-Marts across our landscape, or the ever swelling American waistline?

You think wanting 'more' for 'less' is just good sense? Well let me tell you what you get: more of less.

...

I imagine that this newest mad cow threat is going to make a lot of folks angry. I just hope it makes them angry enough to vote, not in elections which may or not be useless, but with money. Believe me, every dime you spend is a vote - a statement of what you believe in and what you value; which lines you'll cross and which ones you won't. Me, heck even if I didn't have a taste bud in my head I wouldn't want anyone feeding ground up cow brains to beef cattle on my behalf anymore than I'd want to set one foot in a Wal-Mart.

It doesn't really bother me that the human race is probably going to be done in by its own hubris... that hammer has been falling for quite awhile now. What does bother me is that people don't appear to be waking up... that to the average American, mad cow disease (and famine, and war, and everything else) is something they hear about on the news as they're going through the drive-through to pick up a burger. The people have become cattle, gorging themselves at the trough of excess and ignorance... I wonder what the next disease will do to them.