"Hamburger Helper"
Tall fescue grasses have long been a favorite grazing food for cattle in the southeastern United States, but a fungus that produces toxic compounds similar to LSD likes the grass too. If cattle feed on infested blades, they give less milk, produce fewer offspring, and often develop a degenerative hoof disease. "It's a huge problem in the East," says Vivien Allen, an animal-foraging expert at Texas Tech University.
Trying to rid the grass of fungus would help eradicate this $600-million-a-year scourge but would raise other problems, because the fungus also protects the grass against insects and helps it tolerate stress from drought and overgrazing. Fortunately, nature may have provided a better remedy, in the form of a brown seaweed called Ascophyllum nodosum. Allen and her colleagues at Virginia Tech and Mississippi State discovered that an extract from the seaweed, when sprayed on a pasture, activates the innate defense mechanisms of both the grass and the animals that eat it. It also boosts cattle's immune systems and improves the quality of their meat.
"This has large economic implications,"says Allen. The researchers now plan to determine whether they can treat the animals with a seaweed supplement in their feed, thus saving the cost of spraying.

Also see www.beef.org/prodirm/irm_allen.htm for more information.

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I am not a human being having a spiritual experience, I am a spiritual being having a human experience.

-Abaddon

-Abaddon

[This message has been edited by Abaddon (edited December 27, 1999).]