"Risk of dying from mad cow disease by eating U.S. beef was less than from riding a motorcycle in Taiwan traffic"

Posted on October 30, 2009 by Bill Marler

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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Nebraska Firm Recalls Beef Tongues That Can Contain Prohibited Material - Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE)

Posted on October 15, 2009 by Mad Cow

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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Japan Suspends Beef Imports From Tyson Plant

Posted on October 14, 2009 by Mad Cow Lawyer

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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Cow Backbone Found in Japan - Violates BSE Ban

Posted on October 10, 2009 by Mad Cow Lawyer

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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The Evolution of the Mad Cow

Posted on October 2, 2009 by Mad Cow

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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