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

The Associated Press
Wednesday, September 21, 2005; 3:12 PM

JACKSONVILLE, Ark. -- British ready-to-eat meals donated for Hurricane Katrina victims are stuck on shelves at an air base in Arkansas because of strict U.S. regulations put in place after a mad cow disease scare.

Little Rock Air Force Base in Jacksonville, which has been the hub for all international Katrina aid, has received 1,842 tons of goods from dozens of countries since the hurricane hit the Gulf Coast on Aug. 29.

The meals containing British meat cannot be used because U.S. regulations prohibit the importation of British beef and poultry. The prohibition was put in place after the degenerative disease that affects the central nervous system was found in British cattle. A human form of the disease can be deadly.

"We have an obligation to hold the food we're distributing to evacuees to the same standards we maintain for all Americans on a daily basis," U.S. Agriculture Department spokeswoman Terri Teuber said Tuesday. "We are not saying these MREs are unfit or unsafe. We're saying they don't meet the importation standards, and they are being set aside."

It was unknown what would happen to the meat products in the British MREs, Teuber said.

She said the number of British meals involved was not available and that some of the MREs without meat were distributed.

She also said officials were looking for ways to use other British food and goods that have made their way to the Gulf Coast.

"We are grateful for the donations, and they are being put to very good use," Teuber said.

In all, some 400,000 MREs have been donated by foreign countries, said Army Major Paul Swiergosz, a Defense Department spokesman

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www.chinaview.cn
2005-09-21 09:46:50

BEIJING, Sept. 21 (Xinhuanet) -- The U.S. Senate voted on Tuesday to keep shipments of Japanese Kobe beef out of the United States until Tokyo ends its ban on American beef, imposed 19 months ago as a precaution against mad cow disease.

Senators said the votes were a signal of frustration with Japan, traditionally the No. 1 customer for U.S. beef exports. The U.S. cattle industry says it loses $100 million each month since the market is closed.

Japan has refused to allow the purchase of U.S. beef since the first case of mad cow disease in a Canadian-born cow was confirmed in December, 2003. Japan agreed to lift the ban in 2004 but still hasn't done so.

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By Claire Parker
Staff writer
The Fayetteville Observer

Participation in a national animal identification system should be an option for farmers, not a federal requirement, U.S. Rep. Robin Hayes said Monday in Fayetteville.

Hayes said a volunteer system for tracking livestock benefits those in the farming and agriculture business.

"The system will add value to your product and will put more money into the agricultural community," Hayes said.

The congressman spoke at a town hall-style meeting at Fayetteville Technical Community College.

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FDA Chief Says Feed Regulations to Mirror Those in Canada As Defense Against Mad Cow Disease
By LIBBY QUAID
The Associated Press
Sep. 19, 2005

The government will close a gap in the U.S. defense against the spread of mad cow disease by changing feed regulations to mirror those in Canada, FDA commissioner Lester M. Crawford said Monday.

In remarks to a food policy conference hosted by the Consumer Federation of America, Crawford said the new regulations would be coming soon. But did not say when.

Canada has proposed regulations banning at-risk tissues brains, spinal cords and other parts that can carry mad cow disease from feed for all animals, including chickens, pigs and pets. The new rules have not yet taken effect; current rules are the same as U.S. rules.

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www.chinaview.cn

BEIJING, Sept. 13 (Xinhuanet) -- Britain's Health Protection Agency said Monday it is investigating whether the human form of mad cow disease can be passed on through dental procedures.

Government scientists will use mice to discover whether they can catch variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD) from contaminated dental instruments.

The three-year experiment, begun recently, was announced at the agency's annual conference at the University of Warwick.

The main routes of transmission of the disease, known as variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease in humans, are believed to be eating infected beef, or through blood transfusions.

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Health protection experts have said they are investigating whether the human form of mad cow disease can be passed on through dental procedures.

The risk to dental patients is thought to be very small
Government scientists will use mice to discover whether they can catch variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD) from contaminated dental instruments.

They will also see whether mice who have been purposely infected with BSE - as if they had eaten contaminated meat - show signs of the disease in the tissue in their mouths.

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By JENNIFER McKEE
Gazette State Bureau

HELENA - Montana scientists have discovered size matters when it comes to strangely misshapen brain proteins and the deadly ailments they cause - including mad cow disease.

In a paper published Thursday in the journal Nature, scientists at Rocky Mountain Laboratories in Hamilton show that big clumps of misshapen brain proteins called prions are not as effective at causing deadly brain disease as smaller ones. Really small pieces of the protein, however, don't seem to cause disease at all.

"This was totally surprising," said Jay Silveira, lead author of the paper who spent years working on the groundbreaking experiment.

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Bush administration on Tuesday eased regulations restricting the use of cattle parts in certain animal feed, a safeguard considered the main defense against mad cow disease.

The Food and Drug Administration said it would no longer designate a cattle's entire small intestine as prohibited material in cattle feed.

"FDA is amending the rule to allow use of the small intestine in human food and cosmetics, provided that the distal ileum has been removed," the agency said.

The Agriculture Department was expected to make similar changes to its rules.

After the discovery of the first U.S. case of mad cow disease in December 2003, the federal government implemented a series of strict regulations preventing the spread of the brain-wasting disease.

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Reuters
London, September 2, 2005

Mad cow disease may have originated from animal feed contaminated with human remains washed ashore after being floated downriver in Indian funerals, British scientists said on Friday. The cause of mad cow disease, or bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), which infected an estimated 2 million cattle during an epidemic in Britain, is unknown.

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By EMMA ROSS, AP Medical Writer
Thursday, September 1, 2005
(09-01) 14:31 PDT LONDON, United Kingdom (AP) --

A new theory proposes that mad cow disease may have come from feeding British cattle meal contaminated with human remains infected with a variation of the disease.

The hypothesis, outlined this week in The Lancet medical journal, suggests the infected cattle feed came from the Indian subcontinent, where bodies sometimes are ceremonially thrown into the Ganges River.

Indian experts not connected with the research pointed out weaknesses in the theory but agreed it should be investigated.

The cause of the original case or cases of mad cow disease, or bovine spongiform encephalopathy, is unknown, but it belongs to a class of illnesses called transmissible spongiform encephalopathies, or TSEs.

Such illnesses exist in several species. Scrapie is a TSE that affects sheep and goats, while chronic wasting disease afflicts elk and deer. A handful of TSEs are found in humans, including Kuru, Alper's disease and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, or CJD.

All TSEs are fatal, untreatable and undiagnosable until after death. They are called spongiform encephalopathies because the diseases involve spongy degeneration of the brain.

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