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

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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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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A group of Greek scientists, led by Evgenia Salta, are reporting that farmed sea bream, a commercially farmed fish, can carry and develop BSE or "mad cow" disease when fed contaminated feed.

While this is not a finding of contaminated fish in the wild, the ability of such fish to develop contaminated brain tissue after exposure may be  problematic.   According to this article, the study authors'  conclude:

"the possibility that the affected sea bream brain tissue might be infectious, must be taken seriously in any consideration to lift EU feed bans, especially those related to farmed fish.”

The study did not investigate whether contaminated fish had any ability to contaminate other fish. 

 

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The Rapid City Journal reports that the CEO of a cattle rancher association aimed public criticisms at the USDA's "mad cow" policy.  Bill Bullard, CEO of R-CALF, made his remarks at the annual Stockgrowers Association meeting in Rapid City.   Among Bullard's criticisms:

• The USDA' s policy with respect to Canadian Cattle.   Bullard complained that the "USDA still has not overturned its rule allowing all Canadian cattle and beef to come into the U.S., despite the discovery of 17 cases of bovine spongiform encephalopathy in that country's cattle."
• International buyers, including Japan, continue to limit U.S. beef exports due to concerns over "mad cow"  or bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE).
• USDA continues to allow mingling of Mexican and U.S. cattle as well, raising concerns of bovine tuberculosis, a threat to the health of U.S. cattle herds.

Moving beyond the topic of BSE, Bullard also criticized sanitary conditions at large slaughterhouses:  "We see in the beef industry an increase in e-coli and other foodborne illnesses that originate not from the meat, but from the intestine.  These are enteric bacteria that can only contaminate meat if the meat is contaminated with fecal material. It's a sanitary issue."

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It remains to be seen if variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD), often referred to as "mad cow disease," will become as much of a problem here in the U.S. that it is in the U.K.   The reach of the threat posed by vCJD however is illustrated by this story about possible contamination of public blood supply.   

The Daily Echo reports: 

A campaign for all donated blood to be screened for the human form of mad cow disease is being led locally by a young woman [Lisa Farrant]  from Fordingbridge, after her grandmother, a keen blood donor, died from the disease.

Farrant's grandmother may have been exposed to vCJD as a cafeteria worker where "mechanically recovered meat" was often an ingredient in school meals (editorial note - yuck).

It does not appear that the blood supply in the UK is currently screened for vCJD, nor does it appear that a proper test is imminent:

A spokesperson for the National Blood Service said while there was no approved test of spleens and tonsils as yet, the Advisory Committee on the Safety of Blood, Tissues and Organs (SaBTO) are evaluating the tests and hope to make their recommendations to the government soon.

Let's hope it never comes to this point in the U.S.

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A British professor, and expert on "mad cow" disease, is calling on coroners to test  for the presence of indicators of mad-cow disease in the deceased, according to a upi.com story.  Professor John Collinge is a member of a government panel monitoring the progress of spongiform encephalopathy, or mad cow disease.  According to the report, Collinge says that "without post-mortem tests for the infection it is impossible to get accurate information on how many people in Britain may be carrying it."

164 people in Britain are confirmed to have died of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, the human form of mad cow.  Currently, coroners are not required to conduct tests for the presence of the infectious agent.   Understanding the breadth of the spread of the disease is an important component in designing and implementing protections from it.  If deaths due to Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease are being missed due to a lack of testing, the 164 person figure may be less reliable, and therefore less useful. 

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Science Daily is reporting on results of study that suggests that people who consume deer and elk with chronic wasting disease (CWD) may be escaping infection by an inability of the infectious agent to spread to people.

Data from an ongoing multi-year study suggest that people who consume deer and elk with chronic wasting disease (CWD) may be protected from infection by an inability of the CWD infectious agent to spread to people. The results to date show that 14 cynomolgus macaques (monkeys)  exposed orally or intracerebrally to CWD remain healthy and symptom free after more than six years of observation.

The study does not yet mean it is safe for people to eat elk or deer with CWD. According to SD:

CWD is a type of brain-damaging disease known as a transmissible spongiform encephalopathy (TSE) or prion disease. CWD primarily affects deer, elk, and moose.

Other TSE diseases include mad cow disease, or bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) in cattle, scrapie in sheep, and sporadic Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) in humans. Humans are not susceptible to sheep scrapie, but BSE appears to have infected about 200 people, primarily in Europe in the 1990s. Those findings provided the rationale for the present CWD-macaque study, which began in 2003.

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We have not given much if any space to the National Animal Identification System (NAIS).  We know the United States Department of Agriculture has been listening; that most farmers and ranchers have been protesting, and the public is mostly confused about what's up.

The NAIS was advanced after the 2003 discovery of a Mad Cow in eastern Washington State.  It was tracked to Canada, and before long the whole idea of being able to quickly and easily track animals seemed like a good idea.

The online publication of Wallaces Farmer, however, says there is a new idea out there; this one being advanced by R-CALF, the organization that represents the U.S. cattle industry.  WF reports:

 

R-CALF USA recently sent a letter to the Chairwoman of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Agriculture Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., expressing its appreciation for her decision to hold back further funding for the National Animal Identification System until USDA finishes its listening sessions.

 

R-CALF USA states in its letter that the U.S. needs to create a national strategy to improve livestock disease prevention, control and eradication instead of implementing NAIS...

 

..R-CALF CEO Bill Bullard says DeLauro has been informed of an eight-point plan that should be the starting point for the creation of a national disease strategy that will better protect the health of the nation's livestock and the safety of meat produced from the livestock. Bullard says R-CALF is hopeful USDA will redirect its resources to begin development of a national disease prevention strategy.

 

Go to WF for more.

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Surely the most costly cow ever to trod upon American soil was the one found in Washington State six years ago. The discovery that it had Mad Cow disease led to U.S. beef being banned around the world, costing billions upon billions of dollars.

One-by-one, country-by-country, American Beef has fought its way back. Now it is hoping Taiwan does not turn out to be as volatile as was South Korea.

Harry Tseng, director general of the Taiwan Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Department of North American Affairs, is optimistic about fully opening his country’s market to U.S. beef before 2009 ends.

Stephen M. Young, the top U.S. envoy to Taiwan, has repeatedly urged Taiwan government to make a science-based decision on fully opening its market to U.S. beef.

All of Taiwan's scientific review and technical work indicates that U.S. beef does not pose a threat of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), or mad cow disease, Young tells the Taiwan News.

U.S. de-boned beef from cattle under age 30 months was allowed back into Taiwan in 2005, but local government continued the broader ban after a second Mad Cow was found in the U.S.

In South Korea, the Seoul Central Prosecutor's Office indicted four producers and a script writer of the "PD's Notepad," an investigative television program aired on MBC for airing a story on the Mad Cow threat from U.S. beef.

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 As we say out West, "This isn't our first rodeo."  So when it comes to regulations we are always interested in what happens in the actual implementation of new rules and whether or not there are any unintended consequences.

That is why we are watching for impacts of the the new so-called "BSE" rule requiring livestock renderers and animal feed manufacturers to remove the brain and spinal cord from cows 30 months and older.    We reported on the delay to June 26th for implementing the new rule here.

What has us interested is the fact that the rule applies to the disposal of dead cows, horses, pigs, goats and whatever by renderers.   How this is going to impact rural America remains to be seen.

 

Montgomery County, KY is stepping up with a long-time solution. County government has decided to continue its service of disposing of dead animals for free.

They figure taxpayers won't mind paying for the service as it will both prevent any nasty night-time disposal practices and preserve the rural, horse-ranching countryside.

 

 

 Mark Hicks, writing in the Clarksville, Ky Leaf Chronicle today, reports that:

Other than farmers, not many people think about how to dispose of a dead cow or horse that would likely weigh more than 1,000 pounds.

"It's a valuable service," Palmyra farmer Bobby Wall said. "It's more practical to have the cattle removed. It cuts down on the odor and the buzzards don't take everything — they leave bones and other pieces."

Extension Agent John Bartee lobbied Commissioners to continue the service after the BSE rule takes effect even though it will cost the Montgomery County twice as much once the new rule is in place.  Check out The Leaf Chronicle story here.

 

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A couple of items on the Alberta Prion Research Institute's website recently caught our attention.

First, we found its "Prion Basics" a great feature, especially the listing of the various prion diseases and the mammals they affect. (See below).   Second, we wanted to call attention to the open competition the Institute has for prion research.  Deadlines are coming up, and awards of up to $150,000 sound pretty good even if paid in Canadian funds.   Go here for more.   From "the basics:"

Prion diseases are transmissible—from host to host of a single species and sometimes from one species to another—and destroy brain tissue giving it a spongy appearance. For these reasons, prion diseases are also called transmissible spongiform encephalopathies or TSEs.

Some examples of prion disease and the mammals they affect are:

• Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD; humans)
• variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD; humans, acquired from cattle with BSE)
• Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE, a.k.a. mad cow disease)
• Chronic Wasting disease (CWD; elk, deer)
• Scrapie (infectious disease of sheep and goats)
• Kuru (infectious, in humans who practiced cannibalism in Papua New Guinea)
• Gerstmann-Sträussler-Scheinker disease (inherited disease of humans)
• Fatal Familial Insomnia (inherited disease of humans)

For more from "The Basics," go here.

 

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 Leave it to the Wall Street Journal's Bret Stephens to remind us of "the "mad cow" panic that gripped the world in the 1990s. In his 1997 book "Deadly Feasts," Richard Rhodes warned that the human variant of mad cow, known as vCJD, might kill as many as 500,000 people a year in Britain alone. So far, total confirmed cases world-wide run to around 150."

Stephens writes the WSJ's "Global View" column and serves on the newspaper's editorial board. In"Swine Flu Hysteria" written for publication on May 5th, he writes:

In the matter of swine flu -- and the single dumbest response to it yet -- first prize was about to go to the government of Egypt, which last week ordered a cull of the country's estimated 400,000 pigs, never mind that the disease, name notwithstanding, is mainly transmitted human-to-human.

His runners-up are:

• Russia, which used the flu panic to ban pork imports from Spain and Canada;
• U.S. immigration restrictionists, who see in the "Mexican flu" a fresh reason to argue for a wall along the border;
• and of course Vice President Joe Biden.

We shall continue to cover Mad Cow disease here, and we are happy not to be reporting about a pandemic.  And to be fair to Richard Rhodes, the cannibalistic recycling of animals he wrote about has been largely regulated away.

Check out the rest of Mr. Stephens' column here.

 

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 You've got a couple more days to submit written comments to the Food & Drug Administration (FDA) on the new so-called "BSE" rule requiring  livestock renderers and animal feed manufacturers to remove the brain and spinal cord from cows 30 months and older.

The BSE  rule is intended to keep central nervous system tissue from dead cattle out of animal feed because it can cause Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE), or Mad Cow Disease.

But the new rule will not be going into effect as scheduled on April 27th as FDA has suspended implementing it until at least June 26, 2009.

Rural congressmen and farm and ranch organizations like the National Cattlemen's Beef Association (NCBA) are telling FDA there are going to be negative unintended consequences from the BSE rule.  At the end of March, 30 congressmen signed a letter questioning the rule's impact to the acting FDA Commissioner.

“This rule has essentially ended rendering services in many parts of the country and left producers with no legal alternatives,” says NCBA's Elizabeth Parker.   “These are 1,200-pound animals. It is unrealistic and simplistic to think that producers can dispose of them in their backyards. The environmental and economic consequences are enormous, and FDA has the responsibility to consider those concerns before implementing this rule.”

Continue reading for the FDA information on how to file written comments and for additional background information.

Continue Reading...

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 Yale University scientists have discovered a notable link between Alzheimer's proteins and Mad Cow disease, also known as Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD).

The prion protein, which is associated with the causes of CJD, is normally used in the brain to maintain brain health but can contribute to nerve damage should it get tangled up with amyloid-beta, another protein known as the chief suspect of causing Alzheimer's disease.

Stephen M Strittmatter, the senior author of the study and the Vincent Coates professor of neurology and director of cellular neuroscience, neurodegeneration and repair at Yale, said the discovery was somewhat of a "black box".

He continued: "We have known that amyloid-beta is bad for the brain but we have not known exactly how amyloid-beta does bad things to neurons.

"They start the cascades that make neurons sick."

 

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Gerry Adams, the leader of Sinn Fein, has often made life difficult for the government in London. He is doing so again by supporting Christine Lord, the mother seeking answers from the government about her son Andy's death from Variant Creutzfeldt Jakob (vCJD).

The Sinn Fein leader has given his full support to Lord, who was today set to embark on a three-day visit to the Northern Ireland Assembly in Stormont. Her son Andy Black died six months after being diagnosed with Variant Creutzfeldt Jakob disease in December 2007.

Gerry Adams wrote Lord saying: 'I cannot imagine how hurt you are at the unnecessary death of your child. I admire your efforts to find the truth about vCJD and I assure you that I and my party support your efforts.'

We covered Lord's demands last month and you can go back and check that out here.

 

 

 

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Beef may be what's for dinner, but cattlemen say the economics of their business just don't pencil out anymore. They say that's why the cattle population in the U.S. has dipped to 42 million, and the number of new calves has not been so low since 1951. Corn prices pushed up by ethanol makers and more land being used to grow grains have all helped cut the cattle population.

Come April 27th, cattlemen (and women) will have a new regulation to contend with--a new rendering regulation that goes into affect that could affect their ability to dispose of dead cattle.

The new regulations bans the use of these carcasses in livestock feed if the cattle are over 30 months of age. This federal regulation is intended to prevent the spread of BSE or mad cow disease and will likely result in increased disposal costs for livestock producers.

Throughout cattle country, there is a concern that the regulation will cause some with a carcass to dispose of to just "dump and drive."

Cattle states are trying to handle the new realty on their own.  For example:

Minnesota Department of Agriculture (MDA) Livestock Development Supervisor Curt Zimmerman says the feed ban regulation has presented challenges to the cattle industry.

"We asked producers, rendering companies, livestock organizations and state livestock experts to consider the impact of this ban and what disposal options would be available to beef and dairy farmers," said Zimmerman. "On-farm pick-up will remain an option for producers, and we're examining other disposal methods, such as composting and burial that may work for some producers."

While most rendering services in Minnesota have indicated they will continue farm pick-up of dead cattle, producers will be responsible for providing documentation proving the age of the cattle. If verification cannot be provided, the cattle will be considered to be over 30 months of age and producers will be charged accordingly by the rendering service. Producers are encouraged to discuss with their local feedlot experts and extension educators what options are best suited to their operation.

For more, go here.

 

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 "We had three Secretaries of Agriculture during the Bush administration. [Anne] Veneman will likely be remembered for her response to bovine spongiform encephalopathy, which was then and is still incredibly damaging to the industry despite the fact that the enhanced testing protocol she initiated eventually exonerated the U.S. cattle herd," said Jeremy Russell, director of communications and government relations, National Meat Association.

Russell made his comments to MEAT & POULTRY, the Business Journal for Meat and Poultry Processors.  Opinions about all three USDA Secretaries (Veneman, Mike Johanns, and Ed Schafer) can be found here.

It was Veneman who on Dec. 23, 2003 announced a cow born in Canada had made its way to Washington State and it carried Bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), or mad cow disease to the United States.  

Veneman today heads up the United Nations Children Fund (UNICEF).

 

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Quick!  Name the Asian country that says Smithfield Beef plant in Wisconsin is not turning out meat that is fit for export to their nation?   South Korea?  Wrong!

Sure those South Koreans made it difficult.   They damn near brought down their government over a Mad Cow scare that was way over the top.  But in the end, tons upon tons of U.S. beef being consumed by the South Koreans spoke for the public in a way political protests never did.

The correct answer to our little quiz is Japan, which is also re-discovering it taste for U.S. beef even though its government remains picky about details.   Yesterday, Reuters said:

 

Japan has suspended imports from a former Smithfield Beef Group meatpacking plant in Wisconsin after it found meat that could not be verified as coming from cattle aged 20 months or less, the farm ministry said on Thursday.

The ministry said it had asked the United States to look into the matter, adding that imports from the Green Bay plant that shipped the cargo would be halted until it received a report on the issue.

For more, go here.

 

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 Scientists in the United Kingdom say there could be a "second wave" of variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease -- the human form of the mad cow disease -- after discovering that some people have a genetic predisposition to the disease.

The scientists say a person's individual DNA could affect the length of time that the disease can remain in the body before symptoms develop.

A total of 167 people have died from vCJD in Britain since the mid-1990s.

For more from the London Telegraph, check this out.

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Everyone, at one time or another, has used "white noise" as a sleep aid.   National Public Radio (NPR) tries to keep it a secret, but its over-night broadcasts are highly effective "white noise" for many people. The inclusion of the BBC reports are very useful to those seeking shut-eye.

The trouble for those of us who indulge in this practice is sometimes we hear things in a half asleep-half awake state that leaves us confused the next day.   There was a report over the weekend about South Korea's taste for beef after all the protests and political unrest due to the resumption of U.S. beef imports.   We thought we heard that McDonald's, however, had signs that read: "Only Safe Australian Beef Served."

We thought thought we'd check and see if U.S. Beef is doing anything about this marketing challenge, and instead we found the Denver-based U.S. Meat Export Federation is focused on turning Japanese government opinion against so much BSE testing.  We learned the USMEF hosted a conference in Tokyo just last week with this focus:

An overreliance on meaningless testing and a lack of focus on documenting the effectiveness of steps that are making significant inroads against Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE) are hindering a hungry world’s access to protein, driving up food costs and harming local economies as well as the U.S. beef industry.

According to the USMEF, Japan’s insistence on 100 percent testing for all cattle has been a costly error, but one that is difficult to reverse because it has been portrayed to consumers in Japan as an essential safety step.  Japan was U.S, Beef's largest export market until the 2003 discovery of a Mad Cow from a herd in Canada found its way into Washington State.

USMEF presented speakers who claimed Japan is spending $10 billion a year on useless testing.

Meanwhile, we went to Meat & Poultry, the business journal for meat and poultry processors, to learn that since June, nearly 20,000 tons of U.S. beef has entered South Korea.

Go here for the Meat & Poultry story on the export federation's conference in Japan.  Now we will go back to sleep and maybe learn something else by morning!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Less testing of cattle brains for BSE is being recommended today to the Board of the Food Standards Agency of the European Commission.   Under current regulations, the brains of all cattle aged over 30 months are tested for BSE before the beef is allowed into the food chain.  The plan is to raise the testing age to 48 months from next January.

In the UK, according to the Times Online, this would mean that beef from 106,000 cattle a year – about a quarter of all British beef produced annually – would be allowed on sale for the dinner plate without their brains being tested.

The Food Standards Agency's board advice will be sent to health ministers.  Approval has already been given to the Commission by the European Food Safety Authority (Efsa).  The newspaper reports that:

Professor Patrick Wall, chairman of Efsa and an adviser to the FSA on meat controls, told The Times that the tests on 30 month-old cattle were redundant.  “In the past two years of testing for BSE in animals over 30 months there have been no positive cases in cattle under 42 months throughout Europe. My view is that the controls are not necessary and are not proportionate to the risk,” he said.

The move isn't going down without controversy.  Times Online says:  The move - 12 years after the Government admitted a link between eating BSE-infected beef and the variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease – has alarmed families who have lost loved ones from the incurable illness.

For more, go here.

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The 2003 discovery of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) in a dairy cow of Canadian origin in a Washington State cattle herd cost U.S. beef exporters $11 billion between 2004 and 2007, a new report says.

Because many countries restricted imports of U.S. beef after that 2003 event for reasons inconsistent with international standards, the International Trade Commission undertook a study.  It's report is titled "Global Beef Trade: Effects of Animal Health, Sanitary, Food Safety, and Other Measures on U.S. Beef Exports."

Meat & Poultry, the business journal for meat and poultry processors,  reports on the study:

Farm-gate sales of U.S. cattle and calves during the period between 2004 and 2007, the period from which this study is based upon, were $195.5 billion, so the $11 billion in losses estimated by the I.T.C. translates to 5.6 percent of cattle producers’ income, according to the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association. The report also estimated tariffs and tariff-rate quota restrictions cost the industry another $6.3 billion from 2004 to 2007. 

For the rest of M&P story, go here.

 

 

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We are adding Rick Plumlee at The Wichita Eagle to our list to our list to check out on the weekends.  For some reason, some of the best stories relating to food safety and agriculture are held for weekend publication.  This one ran Saturday.:

Researchers have discovered that genetic mutation may sometimes cause mad cow disease, raising hopes that breeders will be able to use the information to eliminate one avenue for the disease.

The findings were announced Friday by Kansas State University, where one of the researchers, Juergen Richt, joined its veterinary medicine faculty this summer.

"We now know (mad cow disease is) also in the genes of cattle," Richt said. "Genetic BSE we can combat."

Until several years ago, Richt said it was thought that mad cow disease -- bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or BSE -- was strictly a foodborne disease. But the new findings show the disease is also caused by a genetic mutation within the prion protein gene.

For the rest of the story, go here.

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Case Western Law Professor Jonathan Adler writes on the widely read blog called The Volokh Conspiracy.  He's set off an interesting discussion over there with a column titled: WAS CREEKSTONE REALLY ABOUT SPEECH?  Professor Adler raises the question of whether "the USDA was less concerned about the testing than it was about what Creekstone might say about it."

Check his analysis here.  Many comments are attached and it all is worth reading.

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The six-year old Alberta dairy cow found to be suffering from bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) in February was the victim of infected feed, according to the official investigation.

It was Canada's 12th case of mad cow disease since 2003 and infected feed has been blamed for all previous cases as well.

"It is reasonable to presume that this animal was exposed to feed containing a low level of infectivity during its first year of life," the Canadian Food Inspection Agency said in a statement.

The CFIA brought in strict feed rules last year which it said should help eliminate the disease nationally within a decade. It says that until then, a handful of new cases are likely to appear.

Go here for more.

 

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We have to admit we do not see much of the New Scientist.

Since this article is sourced back to The National Prion Disease Pathology Surveillance Center (NPDPSC), we are going with it.   We'll report, but let you decide!

A NEW form of fatal dementia has been discovered in 16 Americans, ten of whom have already died of the condition. It resembles Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease - with patients gradually losing their ability to think, speak and move - but has features that make it distinct from known forms of CJD.

No one yet knows how the disease originates, or under what conditions it might spread. Nor is it clear how many people have the condition. "I believe the disease has been around for many years, unnoticed," says Pierluigi Gambetti, director of the US National Prion Disease Pathology Surveillance Center at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. Cases may previously have been mistaken for other forms of dementia.

Since Gambetti's team wrote a paper describing an initial 11 cases referred to his centre between 2002 and 2006 (Annals of Neurology, vol 63, p 697), another five have come to light. "So it is possible that it could be just the tip of the iceberg," Gambetti says.

As in other spongiform encephalopathies, such as CJD and mad cow disease (BSE), the brain tissue of victims is full of tiny holes. This damage is thought to be caused by the accumulation of prions, misfolded versions of a brain protein called PrP that can convert normal PrP molecules into their own misshapen form.

Go here for the rest of the report.

According to its website, the Prion Center has examined only two CJD cases since 1997, one originated in Saudi Arabia and the other in the United Kingdom. 

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The English web site of The Chosun says its time for the protests against importing American beef to end...

People in around a hundred countries eat U.S. beef every day, including Americans and Europeans. Most people around the world consume U.S. beef from cattle aged 30 months or older, but nowhere do you see mad cow hysteria or protests. If you ask people in other countries right now whether they believe eating American beef will cause them to come down with vCJD (Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease), they will say you must be out of your mind.

Yet only this past weekend there was another protest in downtown Seoul, which attracted 50,000 people.  It was another production of the People’s Association for Measures Against Mad Cow Disease and brought out  religious groups including Catholics, Protestants, Buddhists and Won Buddhists, as well as the opposition United Democratic Party, Democratic Labor Party, New Progressive Party and the Renewal of Korea Party.  The Korean Confederation of Trade Unions and university students also participated.

According to The Chosun:

Protests have been going on for two months now, with participants claiming that eating U.S. beef leads to death by variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD), or the human form of mad cow disease. Over the last two months, anybody who is anybody has joined in the protests, and just about every imaginable act of violence has been committed.

Meanwhile, President  Lee Myung-bak of South Korea dismissed his agriculture, health and education ministers in an attempt to reduce some of the heat on the four-month old government, which agreed to allow American beef imports to resume.   They were halt back in 2003 after a single "Mad Cow" was found in Washington State.

The New York Times story on the changes in the South Korean government can be found here.

And, go here for the full Chosen editorial.

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The Land, a publication of Farmonline, is reporting on Canada's 13th "Mad Cow" discovery.

The Canadian Food Inspection Agency announced Monday afternoon that it has confirmed the country's 13th case of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) in a cow in the western province of British Columbia.

The government agency said the confirmation posed no threat to humans or other animals.

No part of the animal entered the human food chain. The animal was detected through Canada's national BSE surveillance program.

The CFIA has launched a comprehensive investigation in an effort to determine the birth farm of the animal.

In Canada the national surveillance program has tested more than 220,000 cattle since 2003. All cattle found with BSE have been detected in western Canada.


Go here for The Land's complete story.

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Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy

Bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), referred to as "mad cow disease," is a chronic degenerative nervous system disease affecting cattle. The disease was first diagnosed in 1986 in Great Britain. BSE is so named because of the spongy appearance of the brain tissue of infected cattle when sections are examined under a microscope.

Affected animals may display changes in temperament, such as nervousness or aggression, abnormal posture and difficulty in rising, decreased milk production, or loss of body weight despite continued appetite. Affected cattle die or are killed.

The incubation period (the time from when an animal becomes infected until it first shows signs of disease) is from 2 to 8 years. Following the onset of clinical signs, the animal's condition deteriorates until it dies. This process usually takes from 2 weeks to 6 months.

Currently, there is no test to detect the disease in a live animal; veterinary pathologists confirm BSE by postmortem microscopic examination of brain tissue or by the detection of the abnormal form of the prion protein.

Since November 1986, over 178,000 head of cattle have been diagnosed with BSE in Great Britain. The epidemic peaked in January 1993 at approximately 1,000 new cases reported per week. Agricultural officials in Great Britain have taken a series of actions to eradicate BSE, including making BSE a notifiable disease, prohibiting the inclusion of mammalian meat-and-bone meal in feed for all food-producing animals, prohibiting the inclusion of animals more than 30 months of age in the animal and human food chains, and destroying all animals showing signs of BSE and other animals at high risk of developing the disease.

The identification in 2003 of a BSE case in Canada, and the subsequent identification later that year of a BSE case in the United States that had been imported from Canada led to the concern that indigenous transmission of BSE may be occurring in North America. In response, the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) implemented additional safeguards to minimize the risk for human exposure to BSE and on July 1, 2004, initiated a 12- to 18-month-long intensive testing program for BSE among cattle at relatively high risk for the disease (e.g., non-ambulatory cattle). A US-bred cow was found to be BSE-positive in June 2005 in Texas.

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