The mad cow saga in the Northwest continues: 129 more cows are to be killed as potential herdmates of the original infected cow. This problem isn’t going away — as long as we continue to treat meat as a staple of our diet, mad cow or diseases like it will make their way into the food supply. Even if every offsping and herdmate of the originally infected cow were found and killed, the conditions of our nation’s meat industry (and the policies that foster those conditions) make diseases like mad cow a real threat.