According to the European Commission, it is an overstatement to claim water may prevent dehydration, but not far fetched to claim you could contract mad cow disease from violin strings. In fact the EC wants to ban instrument strings made of cow gut for that very reason. Musicians apparently are willing to take the risk for the sake of artistic purity.
Bach-ing mad: EU could ban orchestras from using cow gut for strings
…even compositions by the likes of Bach, Vivaldi and Purcell aren’t safe from the Brussels busybodies.
Performers warn it may soon be impossible to play such music as the composers intended it to be heard because of EU rules restricting the manufacture of traditional cow gut instrument strings.
Campaigners say that to catch mad cow disease, or Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, from strings from an infected animal, you would need to swallow several yards of them.
It has been noted that cows produce more milk if they listen to classical music. I wonder if there is something mystical going on with that. Are the cows enraptured by the genius of Bach or are they sensing a supernatural vibration that Clara or Bessie or another bovine friend is among us again?
There are things that defy reason. The European Commission is one of them.
seeing how there’s no great upswell in any known historical period of classical musicians afflicted with pica turning up with mad cow… seeing how one of the upcoming greatest threats to the health of the western world is disease resistant to our antibiotics one would think their attentions were better spent elsewhere.
they should be more concerned with anthrax- the spores of which stay potent for centuries. it turns up near old textile mills, in old goat hair insulation around pipes, in old applications of plaster where animal hair was used as a binder, in soundproofing panels from the 20th century, in bonemeal, and on the drum heads of say the bongos of beatniks or of the heroes of the #OWS. anthrax doesn’t sicken or kill many people in this manner but it affects more people than tainted violin strings.
all strings of this sort made from animal intestines where called catgut even though no cats were involved, by the way.
geez, guess ill floss my teeth with cowgut…