Cold Cash Follows Mad Cow

We’re coming up on the 5th anniversary of the discovery of Mad Cow disease in the United States. It came here with an unfortunate little cow from Canada that found its way to Washington State.
It ended, for a long time, U.S beef exports. The cost to the U.S. economy? $6 billion a year, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Somewhat less, according to Kansas State University.

Now U.S. beef is getting back in the overseas pipeline. Last May, the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE) cleared U.S. beef from animals of any age as a “controlled BSE risk” and therefore safe for export.

BSE, of course, is Bovine spongiform encephalopathy---science’s name for Mad Cow Disease. Other countries with controlled BSE risk include Brazil, Canada, Chile, Switzerland, and Taiwan.
If you are looking for countries with less BSE risk, you might want to look at beef from Australia, Argentina, New Zealand, Singapore, and Uruguay. Those countries have “negligible” BSE risk, according to the OIE.

Russia, however, is looking to cut a deal for genuine U.S. beef. With its pockets filled with dollars from selling us oil at near $100 per barrel, Russia wants some pricey cuts of U.S. beef, according to a Dec. 3, 2007 report in the Wall Street Journal. (“From Mad Cow to Cash Cow).

WSJ reported that before it banned U.S. beef, Russians mostly consumed cheaper cuts, livers, hearts, and kidneys. Now, Russia in the market for more expensive beef cuts.

One thing is for certain, however. It will be a long time before U.S. beef makes up for the mistake it made when it brought that little cow over the Canadian border.

S. Korea, U.S. Agree to Discuss Bone-in Beef Issue

South Korea and the United States agreed Friday to discuss bone-in beef and other import quarantine issues after a world animal health organization's general assembly slated for late May. The decision was reached in a two-day-long beef technical consultation meeting in Seoul. No exact date for the meeting has been set, the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry said.

The World Organization for Animal Health is to convene a meeting of its members in Paris on May 20-25. It is expected to give the United States a mad cow disease "controlled risk" classification that technically allows the country to export beef without limitations, reports Yonhap News.

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Scientists Closer to Unfolding Mysteries of Prion Formation in Mad Cow Disease

Short elements within a prion protein's sequence can cause it to activate and even cross the species barrier to spread neurodegenerative disorders such as Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease to humans

Prions, the maddening, infectious proteins, and the diseases they trigger, such as the fatal neurodegenerative disorder in humans, Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease—as well as its bovine counterpart, mad cow disease—have baffled scientists for decades. Although researchers know what they are (abnormally folded proteins) and the illnesses that they cause, how they form and multiply has remained elusive.

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