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by A.B. Hansen
Among both consumers and farmers, there is confusion and trepidation
because of mad cow, Creutzfeldt Jacob and other brain wasting diseases.
While more readers of this magazine are likely to be vegetarians than
the average population, in fact many of us still eat meat, dairy products
and eggs. Unfortunately, it is difficult for anyone to get accurate
information on food safety when it concerns mad cow or related diseases.
Transmissible spongiform encephalopathies (TSEs) are believed to be
caused by a mutated version of a normal protein found in animals.
The best known of these is BSE or the bovine form of TSE, which infected
about 2 million cattle, caused the collapse of the British beef industry
and has killed 160 people so far. TSEs destroy the brain turning it
into a sponge-like structure.
The Canadian government says that there is only a small risk of getting
new variant Creutzfeldt Jacob disease (nvCJD) from eating beef. This
in spite of the fact that Canada has yet to implement any of the recommendations
the World Health Organization (WHO) made in 1996 to prevent the spread
of BSE.
Many scientists suspect that it was sheep scrapie in Great Britain
that jumped species and infected cattle. While BSE may have originated
in cattle rather than sheep, it was the practice of feeding rendered
cattle to cattle that caused the epidemic. Hundreds of BSE infected
cattle are still found every year in Europe. The BSE cow from Alberta,
which closed the border to Canadian beef exports, was found purely
by accident. The Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) still only
requires spot checks even on sick animals, contrary to WHO recommendations.
Claude Lavigne of the CFIA told Common Ground June 13 that the government
is reviewing its policies and procedures regarding BSE. He would not
comment on the need for implementing the 1996 WHO recommendations.
Other livestock, wild game and pets are getting TSEs. In 1979 in New
York State, pigs caught a BSE-like disease and the US Department of
Agriculture was blamed for a cover-up where brain tissue disappeared
rather than being sent to a British laboratory as ordered by inspectors.
Unlike here, European pigs are not fed cow parts because laboratory
testing shows that pigs injected with BSE come down with TSE. Research
on chickens and TSE is incomplete. Poultry do not get TSE but could
be carriers. As well, poultry bedding, feathers, spilled feed and
manure is processed and fed to other livestock including cattle, making
it another route for BSE to get back into cattle. Very little is know
about any possible TSE transmission through eggs or dairy products.
Chronic wasting disease (CWD) in deer and elk can probably be transmitted
to cattle and vice versa. News editor Philip Yam of Scientific American
says that it is possible deer and elk infected with CWD can transmit
it to cattle. Studies to prove a link are incomplete. In Europe CWD
has now entered reindeer herds, which means caribou in North America
are also vulnerable. Dozens of other species, mostly zoo animals,
have come down with TSE from infected feed.
In Canada CWD came into the country with both farmed deer from the
US and infected wild deer. In areas with CWD, hunters are warned not
to eat venison from possibly sick animals or even specific parts of
healthy animals like cuts of meat from near the spine. Numerous cases
of CJD are now showing up among hunters who ate infected deer or elk.
CWD was identified in North America more than 40 years ago in Colorado.
Even organic farms are not totally safe from TSE which has been found
to survive in the soil for 15 years. If any bone meal has been used
for fertilizer at any previous time or infected animals have been
pastured, there is a risk.
The economic implications for farming are huge. The Canadian beef
industry alone is worth $30 billion per year. Many farmers stand to
lose everything if the import ban on beef continues in most of our
markets like the US, Japan and much of Europe. If the farmers go out
of business it will be because the federal government is primarily
interested in a quick reopening of the US border to beef. It is not
interested in protecting consumers and farmers through careful scientific
testing of all TSE vulnerable livestock.
Federal agricultural officials continue to assure the public that
our food supply is not in danger. Easy to say, but not so simple to
do because of the nature of a rogue prion which has the potential
to cause an epidemic. The only practical way to kill it is by incineration.
TSEs are biomagnified in both the food supply system and in nature.
All infected animals have to be isolated, killed and incinerated.
Agriculture Minister Lyle Vanclief said the Alberta cow confirmed
with mad cow disease did not enter the food chain. How then does he
explain the three BC beef herds which had to be slaughtered and brain
tested? Looks like he only meant directly into the human food chain,
not as animal feed made from the BSE cow. As of June 11, all rendered
products from the infected Alberta cow had yet to be found.
Why the secrecy? There were lots of British cows AWOL in North America,
imported during the dangerous part of the British outbreak. In the
US alone, more than 30 of the 500 animals imported are missing and
were being sought for years by the various agriculture departments.
Whether they entered the human food supply directly or were rendered,
these British cattle could well be the source of obscure TSE outbreaks
like the 1986 Wisconsin mink farm disaster where more than 4,000 animals
died of TSE. Research by Dr. Richard Marsh of the University of Wisconsin
concluded the smoking gun was likely a BSE cow. He and other researchers
took mink brain tissue and injected it into cows and the cows came
down with BSE, proving a link between disease in the two unrelated
mammals and the TSE they harbored.
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Marsh faced harassment and threats
of lawsuits from the meat industry in response to his warnings about
the need to end the practice of feeding rendered cows back to cows.
Today, those warnings have been vindicated, but neither the USDA nor
the meat industry have shown any willingness to accept his conclusions
that TSE is present in the US cattle population.
Are Vanclief and his department acting responsibly by continuing to
allow poultry feed and pig feed to be made from livestock not tested
for TSE? Where and how the original Alberta cow identified with mad
cow disease was infected is still unknown. As of June 11 almost 2,800
cattle from western Canada had been killed to test for BSE. Since
the incubation time for BSE is so long, we should not be reassured
that testing animals which just recently came into contact with contaminated
feed were infection free.
The only responsible thing for Ottawa to do now is to call an immediate
halt to all feeding of animals to animals and test all meat animals
for TSE. Vancouver Sun columnist Stephen Hume called for a complete
ban on feeding animals to animals in May, but in June when a Health
Canada scientist wrote an internal memo taking the same position,
he was suspended for two weeks and fined three months wages. Vanclief
said stopping the feeding of ruminants to ruminants in Canada is sufficient
protection. He fails to acknowledge that there is no way to prevent
cross contamination of feed at mills, on farms or through waste recycling.
Both mink and cats get TSE from contaminated feed. House cats and
cats in zoos around the world are catching feline spongiform encephalopathy.
Several brands of mad cow contaminated cat food have been recalled.
If there is a coverup in North America as happened in Britain, more
infected cattle could be turned into meal and through biomagnification
infect many more cattle, kicking off a food supply disaster. In the
European Union all "downer" or immobile cattle and cattle
to be slaughtered and which are more than 30 months of age must be
inspected for BSE. Here, officials still think we can get away with
spot checks apart from downer cattle. In fact, according to the Alberta
agriculture minister, it was a one in 10,000 spot check that found
the sick Alberta cow.
The prion, a bundle of protein crystal capable of reproducing, is
thought to cause all the variations of TSE. It mutates much like a
virus, but unlike a virus withstands very high temperatures. The most
important thing is that it is extremely resilient. Nothing short of
burning is practical for killing it since sterilizing at 800 degrees
Celsius is too expensive. Incubation times in cows and humans is between
six and 14 years but only a few months in mink.
There are at least three other TSEs found in humans and dozens more
among other animals. Kuru, formerly common in parts of New Guinea,
is a TSE which was found among tribes that practised ritual cannibalism.
TSE can also occur if a normal prion mutates and becomes a so-called
rogue prion or through being passed from parent to offspring.
There are more questions than answers on prion-caused brain wasting diseases.
BSE links
- AEC
841 - British Beef...In Chains
- bluemud.org
mad_cow.txt
- bluemud.org
Search - Health Conditions and Diseases Mad Cow
- bmj.com
Collected Resources variant Creutzfeld-Jakob Disease
- Bovine
Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE)
- Cattlemen
join hands over border
- CDC
Travelers' Health Information on Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy and Variant
Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease
- Chronic
Wasting Disease
- ChuckIII's
College Resources - Science - mad cow - Free Term Papers, Book Reports, Essays,
and Research Papers and other Colleg
- CNEWS
World - PM, S. Korea discuss beef ban
- DEFRA
, UK Search Web Site - Results. test
- Donor
Blood Issues
- Guardian
Unlimited World dispatch Canada's BSE woes
- Health
- canada.com network
- http--www.bseinquiry.gov.uk-files-ws-s059.pdf
- http--www.gov.pe.ca-af-agweb-library-newsletters-beef-beef_may_03.pdf
- Links
- London
Free Press News Section - Cattle industry at critical point
- London
Free Press News Section - Mad cow may have had U.S. origins
- Mad
Cow Disease (Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy)
- Mad
Cow Disease, the dangers of meat eating!
- Mad
Cow
- Mad
Cows or Mad Scientists 8-10-02
- Mad
Cows, Mad Sheep, Mad Elk, Mad People (The Global Citizen, 2000 07 27)
- MR
MI Deployment Exposures - Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (Mad Cow Disease)
- National
Institutes of Health researcher suspects escapee
- News
- Ottawa - canada.com network
- Newsday.com
- Canada Report Mad Cow May Be From U.S.
- Nutrition
Action Healthletter - Cow Disease Still Mad
- Official
Mad Cow Disease Home Page
- Online
NewsHour Mad Cow Disease -- January 26, 2001
- Other
internet BSE sources
- Prion
Disease News 18 Sep 00
- Prion
Disease News Has Moved
- Prion
Disease Species Barrier Evaporates. 15 Sept 00
- Prion
Disease
- PublicHuntingLand.com
Forums - CWD aka mad deer-elk disease & TSE transmission studies
- Reuters
Latest Financial News - Full News Coverage
- Reuters
AlertNet - Canadian PM to call Koizumi on mad cow-officials
- Scientists
say CWD unlikely to jump to humans, but other experts aren't so sure
- The
Montreal Tribune
- TheStar.com
- Mad cow implementation unclear, Vanclife says
- TOP
NEWS STORY
- Translated
version of http--home.t-online.de-home-koeloe-Borchertbrief1996.htm
- Variant
of Mad Cow Disease Hits Great Lakes Region 8-28-02
- Wisconsin
Ag Connection - National-World News - FDA Takes a Closer Look at Mad Cow Feed
Ban
- Wisconsin
Ag Connection - National-World News - Japan Farm Farm Leader to Meet with Canada
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