Mad Cow Lawyer & Attorney : Marler Clark : Mad Cow Blog

In just over a week, nearly 9000 people have joined a social networking group objecting to the Federal Government's decision to allow beef in Australia from countries affected by mad cow diseae.

The Facebook site, called Support Aussie Farmers - Say No To Imported Beef, says many consumers want imported beef clearly labelled in supermarkets.  Founder of the page, Donna Morrison from Drysdale in Victoria, says Australian consumers have a right to know exactly what they're eating.  "It just makes me so happy to find so many more people out there like myself that are passionate about this country, about its farmers and about our rights," she says.  "The majority of people and myself would prefer to support Australian farmers and back Australian farmers and eat Australian beef.

"It's the best in the world."

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Consumer groups concerned about bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), sometimes referred to as "mad cow disease," are asking the FDA to ban the presence of poultry feces in cattle feed, according to the LA Times.

According to the story, advocates say that the feed in question, which includes "feces, spilled chicken feed, feathers and poultry farm detritus" -- increases the risk of cows becoming infected with BSE.

Michael Hansen, a senior scientist at Consumers Union says that the chicken feed and the feces contain tissue from ruminants -- cows and sheep, among other mammals. BSE can be transmitted to cattle through the consumption of ruminant remains. According to the article, the contamination need not be widespread to cause a problem.  "It takes a very small quantity of ruminant protein, even just 1 milligram, to cause an infection," said Steve Roach, public health program director with Food Animal Concerns Trust, a Chicago-based animal welfare group that is part of the coalition. Cattle industry representatives disagree with the need for a ban:

The National Cattlemen's Beef Assn., the beef industry's main trade group, said the ban was not needed and that several FDA reviews had determined that the chance of cattle becoming infected with mad cow disease from eating poultry litter was remote.

"Science does not justify the ban, and the FDA has looked at this now many times," said Elizabeth Parker, chief veterinarian for the trade group.

Interestingly, at least some of those in the business of selling beef directly to consumers share the consumer groups' concerns:

The practice also makes McDonald's, one of the nation's biggest beef purchasers, nervous. "We do not condone the feeding of poultry litter to cattle," it said in a statement.

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The Legislative Yuan will be able to review the protocol signed by Taiwan and the U.S. allowing the import of bone-in beef, lawmakers said yesterday.

The signing of the protocol on Oct. 23 touched off a wave of protests, with calls for a renegotiation of the agreement to exclude beef parts likely to cause bovine spongiform encephalopathy or mad cow disease. Local governments announced they would rally restaurants and shops against the sale of the beef from Nov. 10.

President Ma and other government officials have said that a renegotiation is out of the question because it would damage Taiwan's international reputation. They say the deal was at least as stringent as similar agreements the U.S. closed with South Korea and EU.

Foreign Minister Timothy Yang denied yesterday that the government had given in to U.S. demands in order to achieve visa-free access to the country for Taiwanese tourists. Earlier, officials also rejected accusations that the beef decision had been made to obtain a new start for talks about a Trade and Investment Framework Agreement.

Meanwhile, American Institute in Taiwan Director William Stanton was backtracking on an earlier comparison he made. He had said the risk of dying from mad cow disease by eating U.S. beef was less than from riding a motorcycle in Taiwan traffic.

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J.F. O'Neill Packing Company, an Omaha, Neb., establishment is recalling approximately 33,000 pounds of beef tongues that may not have had the tonsils completely removed, which is not compliant with regulations that require the removal of tonsils from cattle of all ages, the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) announced today.

Tonsils are considered a specified risk material (SRM) and must be removed from cattle of all ages in accordance with FSIS regulations. SRMs are tissues that are known to contain the infective agent in cattle infected with Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE), as well as materials that are closely associated with these potentially infective tissues. Therefore, FSIS prohibits SRMs from use as human food to minimize potential human exposure to the BSE agent.

The following product is subject to recall:

* " Various weight cases of "BEEF TONGUES." Each case bears the establishment number "EST. 889A" inside the USDA mark of inspection and were sold under the following brand names:

"J.F. O'NEILL PACKING CO.," "WHOLE FOODS NATURAL," "WHOLE FOODS ORGANIC," "PREMIER PROTEIN PARTNERS," "MONTANA RANCH BRAND," "GRASSLAND BEEF," "AUSTIN MEATS," "MORGAN RANCH," "KOBE BEEF AMERICA," "IMPERIAL WAGYU BEEF," "BRAND ADVANTAGE WAGYU," "BRAND ADVANTAGE PARTNERS," "YAMAYA U.S.A.," and "A.D. ROSENBLATT."

The company is recalling all products packed between July 1, 2009, and October 8, 2009. These products were shipped primarily to distribution centers in Nebraska and California for further sale to restaurants, hotels and institutions.

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The AP is reporting that Japan suspended beef shipments from a Tyson Plant  over its failure to remove cattle parts, specifically bovine spinal columns,  banned under a bilateral agreement.  Japanese officials are concerned about  mad cow disease.  According to the A.P.:

Japanese quarantine inspectors found bovine spinal columns in one of 732 boxes shipped from Tyson Fresh Meats Inc., which arrived in Japan in late September, the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries said. The box contained 35 pounds (16 kilograms) of chilled short loin with spinal bones, which were not released commercially, said ministry official Goshi Nakata.

The suspension only affects Tyson's factory in Lexington, Nebraska, one of 46 meatpacking plants approved to export beef to Japan.

The same plant also had Japanese export suspended in February 2007 for a similar problem.

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Japan's farm ministry said Saturday that it had found a cow backbone in a shipment from the United States that violates a ban imposed due to concerns over mad cow disease.

A Japanese importer on Friday informed the ministry that it had received a box containing 16 kilogrammes (35 pounds) of US beef without sanitary certification, a requirement under a trade accord between the two countries.

The ministry later confirmed that it was Japan's third discovery of US cow backbone designated as specified-risk material since Tokyo conditionally lifted a ban on US beef shipments in 2006.

The ministry has suspended imports from the shipping agent and immediately called on the US Department of Agriculture to investigate the case, officials said.

Japan banned US beef in December 2003 after the brain-wasting cattle disease bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) was found in a US herd. Japan had until then been the US cattle industry's biggest export market.

The ban nearly grew into a full-blown trade war, with US farm-state senators pressing for sanctions unless Tokyo opened up its markets by the end of 2005.  Japan agreed in 2006 to resume US imports on condition age and portion limits be imposed on cattle at the time of slaughter.

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Thanks to Mark Johnson of the Journal Sentinel for blogging about "the quest to find where prions came from."  Mark wrote:

Scientists in Canada and the United States claim to have found the evolutionary origin of prions, the deadly killer responsible for a family of fatal brain-wasting illnesses: chronic wasting disease in deer; scrapie in sheep; mad cow disease in cows; and human mad cow disease, kuru and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in people.

In each disease, the prion, a misfolded protein, leaves behind the same grim calling card: spongelike holes in otherwise healthy brains.

Now scientists from the University of Toronto, University of California, San Francisco and the University of Alberta say they have found evidence that prions descended from the ancient ZIP family of metal ion transporters. These ZIP proteins are able to transport zinc and other metals across the membranes of cells.

In their paper, published this week in the online journal PLoS ONE, the scientists say they discovered that prion proteins and ZIP proteins contain long stretches of similar amino acid sequences. The scientists calculated that the similar sequences in both ZIP and prion proteins would acquire very similar three-dimensional structures. Finally, ZIP and prion proteins have a number of other factors in common that suggest an evolutionary link, the scientists reported.

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The Nodaway County Health Center, in northwest Missouri, has provided some excellent information on the nature and perceived sources of "mad cow" disease in humans, as reported in Nodaway News Leader. Apparently, there is public concern over an unconfirmed report of a local death attributable to Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, CJD.

I found these paragraphs very helpful. First, the basic nature of the nearly always fatal CJD is explained.

CJD is believed to be caused by an abnormal form of a naturally-occurring protein that results in destructive changes to the brain. This abnormal protein is called a prion. Prion diseases have been recognized in various species of animals for many years.

Next the different types of CJD, and their respective causes are delineated.

• CJD occurs in several forms. Sporadic CJD, sCJD, is the most common, accounting for about 80 percent of the cases. It occurs mainly in persons 55-75 years of age, but can occur in younger and older individuals as well. This disease is rapidly progressive, with death occurring an average of seven months after symptoms first begin. It
• Genetic CJD is another form, accounting for 10-15 percent of the cases. This disease may be caused when persons inherit genes that make them more susceptible to development of prions in the brain.
• A third form is hospital-acquired CJD. A small number of people have apparently contracted this disease when they received materials such as pituitary hormone, brain tissues or corneal grafts from an infected person, or when surgical instruments used on an infected person were then used on an uninfected person.
• A final and more recently recognized form of CJD is variant CJD, vCJD. Variant CJD was first recognized in 1996, and has been linked to bovine spongiform encephalopathy, BSE. Human cases are thought to have been caused by consumption of BSE-contaminated meat or other tissues, primarily in Great Britain during the 1980s. This disease tends to affect younger persons than sCJD; the average age at death for vCJD is 29 years. The course of vCJD is longer than that of sCJD, with an average survival time of 14 months.

Finally, the health center notes that to date, the apparent threat of CJD in humans in the U.S. is very small. Thanks to Nodaway County health officials for some very informative writing.
 

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Restrictions on import of U.S. beef into Japan, in place since 2003, are unlikely to ease under the new Japanese government, according to this report from Reuters.

The Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) picked up the reins of government on Wednesday in a coalition with two small parties, including the Social Democrats, which oppose both easing beef import rules and opening Japan to more farm imports.

The U.S. beef industry says it has lost some $10 billion in sales to Japan in the six years since Tokyo banned imports of American beef due to mad cow disease. It allowed some supplies to resume in 2006 but under strict limits.

Current import restrictions limit U.S. imports to beef from cattle aged 20 months or younger.   U.S. government officials are working to raise the limit to 30 months, but there has been no movement yet.

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