Portland Nutrition Examiner Gets Its Wrong--Mad Cow Disease Is Rare; Does Not Happen "Often"
We do not wish to pick on anyone.
Over the transom this morning came the work of the “Portland Nutrition Examiner,” Kendall Scott. Writing under a headline---Do you know where your meat and animal products come from?—she wrote:
“According to former cattle rancher, Howard Lyman, many cattle, animals that were never meant to eat meat, end up being fed their own kind, and this often results in Mad Cow Disease. This food-borne illness can then be passed on to humans eating meat from those animals.”
We are use words like “many” and “often.” There are many trees in the forest. People often drive through yellow lights. Those work. “Many” and “often”, however, are not words to be used when writing about Mad Cow Disease.
We write this blog knowing that Mad Cow Disease is rare and that research into all the Prion diseases is fascinating and demands our attention.
We cannot help but point out that several sites on the web that appear dedicated to Mad Cow hysteria haven’t had any new posts in months or years, including Mr. Lyman’s. As indicated below, only three cows infected with Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE) or Mad Cow Disease have been located in U.S. herds. (See blue boxes below) Since this chart was published, a 16th infected animal was found in an animal in Canada. None of these animals entered the human food chain, nor were they fed to other beasts.
Next, we look at so-called "new variant" Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (CJD), the human form of Mad Cow Disease thought to be contracted from eating contaminated beef.
The three people who've died in America from nvCJD appear to have all contracted the disease out of the country. Same story with the one death in Canada.
On a world-wide basis, outside of England and France where the original Mad Cow outbreak occurred, nvCJD is rare.
| COUNTRY | TOTAL NUMBER OF PRIMARY CASES
(NUMBER ALIVE) |
TOTAL NUMBER OF SECONDARY CASES: BLOOD TRANSFUSION
(NUMBER ALIVE) |
CUMULATIVE RESIDENCE IN UK > 6 MONTHS DURING PERIOD 1980-1996 |
| UK | 165 (4) | 3 (0) | 168 |
| France | 24 (1) | - | 1 |
| Republic of Ireland | 4 (0) | - | 2 |
| Italy | 1 (0) | - | 0 |
| USA | 3† (0) | - | 2 |
| Canada | 1 (0) | - | 1 |
| Saudi Arabia | 1 (1) | - | 0 |
| Japan | 1* (0) | - | 0 |
| Netherlands | 3 (0) | - | 0 |
| Portugal | 2 (0) | - | 0 |
| Spain | 5 (0) | - | 0 |
† the third US patient with vCJD was born and raised in Saudi Arabia and has lived permanently in the United States since late 2005. According to the US case-report, the patient was most likely infected as a child when living in Saudi Arabia.
*the case from Japan had resided in the UK for 24 days in the period 1980-1996.
Source: The National Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease Surveillance Unit (NCJDSU), University of Edinburgh. February 2009.
Our final word to Ms. Scott: "Chill."
The reason the cases of "Mad Cow" are not showing up is because there is very little testing for it. After Yakima County, Washington State, had the case of Mad Cow, the Dairy Industry went underground, by making it legal to put their dead cows in their manure, without testing and calling it "Composting." some are even calling it organic.Watch out where you get your manure from for your garden. Some of the compost even magically chages to peat. This is what they are labeling it. Wouldn't it be interesting to test the bags of manure for prions?
Jan Whitefoot is absolutely correct. The United States tests less than 1% percent of all cattle slaughtered for BSE.
Kendall Scott's statement, as quoted in this article reads "According to former cattle rancher, Howard Lyman, many cattle, animals that were never meant to eat meat, end up being fed their own kind, and this often results in Mad Cow Disease. This food-borne illness can then be passed on to humans eating meat from those animals.â€
In this statement she indicated that Mad Cow Disease (scientifically known as Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy or BSE) is common in cattle after being fed infected tissue from other cattle. She did not state, or even imply, that variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease is common.
We haven't updated the Mad Cowboy (Lyman's) website much as our focus has been on our newsletter and other media, which, I might add, among other issues/info, continues to track issues and provide links related to Mad Cow Disease.
You might also want to note that studies have shown some 14% (or therabouts) of what were thought to be Alzheimer's disease deaths, upon reinvestigation, turned about to be CJD (the human form of Mad Cow Disease).
It's generally accepted that the external symptoms of both are somewhat indistinguishable, and some of us believe that many of the deaths due to A.D. are actually CJD from eating contaminated meat products. Autopsies are just not being done regularly and we lack more statistics. Whether this is deliberate, fear of contaminating surgical implements, or carelessness, is, to my knowledge, unclear.
Here's a link to the free newsletter and archives:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Mad_Cowboy/
Best regards, Mark MC editor/webmaster