Meh, it's probably already too late for me though lol, since BSE has been in the US beef supply for some years now. But according to the CDC, the rate of inter-species transmission is low.


http://www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,3...-110878,00.html

quote:

Published on Wednesday, December 24, 2003 by the Guardian/UK First Case of Mad Cow Disease in US by Julian Borger in Washington The US government was yesterday scrambling to calm public fears over its food supply after America's first recorded case of mad cow disease was found in a sick animal in Washington state. I suggest this cow is the tip of an invisible iceberg. My presumption is mad cow disease is spread throughout North America at some level, but because our testing program is so inadequate we have not identified it. John Stauber, co-author of "Mad Cow U.S.A." Ann Veneman, agriculture secretary, said the positive test for BSE (bovine spongiform encephalopathy) was "presumptive" and would be confirmed in a British laboratory. But she said the administration was confident that the finding was accurate and had already implemented measures to curb its spreading. A sample was believed to be on its way to the World Reference Laboratory in Pirbright, Surrey, where a sample was sent from Canada in May after a BSE alert there. The US was last night notifying the country's trading partners and Ms Veneman was not sure how they would react. However, she assured Americans: "The risk of spreading is low based on the safeguards and controls we have put in place." She said the risk of the disease entering the human food chain was minimal. "I plan to serve beef for my Christmas dinner and we remain confident in our food supply," Ms Veneman said, in an echo of the then British agriculture minister John Selwyn Gummer's ill-fated ploy to have his young daughter eat a hamburger on behalf of British beef in 1990. The infected cow identified yesterday was a Holstein which was tested because it was a "downer", unable to walk, when it arrived at a Washington state slaughterhouse. The meat from the cow was nevertheless sent to a processing plant. Agriculture department investigators were yesterday urgently trying to track it down. Ms Veneman said that only the "muscle cuts" had been sent for processing for human consumption and there was no record of the disease being transmitted through the meat. The brain and spinal column had been sent to a "rendering facility" elsewhere, but she did not specify how it had been used. The news hit an already nervous American public, entering the Christmas holiday under a high state of alert because of the risk of a new terrorist attack. Ms Veneman felt it necessary to stress there was no evidence of terrorism in the BSE incident. However, her assurances that the outbreak would be contained were questioned by public health activist, John Stauber. He called them "extremely disingenuous", and pointed out Ms Veneman was a former lobbyist for the cattle industry. "I suggest this cow is the tip of an invisible iceberg," Mr Stauber, co-author of a book ( Mad Cow U.S.A.: Could the Nightmare Happen Here? ) about the threat of the disease, told CNN last night. "My presumption is mad cow disease is spread throughout North America at some level, but because our testing program is so inadequate we have not identified it." He said the US livestock industry, unlike its European counterparts, continued to practice "animal cannibalism". An isolated case of BSE was identified in Canada in May, but Ms Veneman said there was no immediate evidence of a link with the cow identified yesterday.

http://www.ap.org/

quote:

Published on Wednesday, December 24, 2003 by the Associated Press GOP Congress Scuttled Meat Protection Measure by Mark Sherman WASHINGTON - Legislation to keep meat from downed animals off American kitchen tables was scuttled - for the second time in as many years - as Congress labored unsuccessfully earlier this month to pass a catchall agency spending bill. Now, in the wake of the apparent discovery of the first mad-cow case in the United States, the author of the House version of the cattle provision wants to press the issue anew when Congress returns Jan. 20 from its winter recess. The massive, $373 billion spending bill covering several government agencies is still pending in the Senate. "I said on the floor of the House that you will rue the day that because of the greed of the industry to make a few extra pennies from 130,000 head, the industry would sacrifice the safety of the American people," said Rep. Gary Ackerman, D-N.Y., chief House sponsor. "It's so pound foolish." The provision dealing with downed cattle didn't even make it into the compromise version of the legislation that House and Senate conferees brought before Congress late in the year. The Agriculture Department estimates that 130,000 downed animals that are too injured or sick to stand or walk unassisted are slaughtered every year. The provision, which started through the legislative process as an amendment to an agriculture spending bill, would have effectively prohibited the sale of livestock too sick or injured to stand or walk unassisted. The agricultural spending bill passed - with the provision intact - on a Senate voice vote in November after failing by three votes in the House in July. But congressional negotiators did not include it in the broader, $373 billion omnibus spending bill that passed the House this month and which is still awaiting a vote in the Senate. Rep. Maurice Hinchey, D-N.Y., a negotiator who voted for the measure in the House, said Democratic negotiators never had a chance to fight for the proposal. "The Republicans, the leadership, shut off the conference, they closed it down, and this is one of a number of provisions which were handled in a backroom deal without the Democrats there and with only the Republican leadership," said Hinchey. Lawmakers and congressional aides said they consider it very unlikely that Congress would reopen the multibillion-dollar bill to deal with the issue. "I can't imagine that it would be," Rep. Henry Bonilla, R-Texas, an opponent of the measure, said. A day after the government announced the first apparent case of mad cow disease in the United States - in a downed animal - lawmakers and interest groups on both sides of the issue said they had been vindicated. The Humane Society of the United States has warned repeatedly that if the meat from a lone cow with the brain-wasting disease found its way into the food supply, other countries would cut off U.S. beef imports and consumer confidence would be shaken. "We are already seeing that play out," said Humane Society Vice President Wayne Pacelle. Japan, Taiwan and Mexico, the three largest importers, banned U.S. beef. But opponents of the legislation said USDA inspectors might never have discovered the apparent presence of the disease, formally known as bovine spongiform encephalopathy, had Ackerman's legislation been in place. Banning the sale of downed animals would prevent USDA inspectors from detecting possible cases because the animals would never reach the slaughterhouse for inspection, they said. "The fact that it was caught is the significant thing for the consumer," said Rep. Charles Stenholm, D-Texas, the senior Democrat on the House Agriculture Committee. Stenholm has argued that federal inspectors are in the best position to keep sick animals, as opposed to those that can't walk but are otherwise healthy, out of the food chain. Agriculture officials also have insisted that the food supply is safe because the animal parts most at risk of carrying the disease, the brain and spinal column, had been removed. "Muscle cuts of meat have almost no risk," Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman said. In the House, most Republicans as well as conservative and farm-state Democrats opposed the measure. Both chambers passed similar provisions in their versions of the 2002 farm bill, but negotiators stripped the measure from the final version of that bill. In both years, the National Milk Producers Federation lobbied successfully against the provision. "If you don't allow movement off the farm, then you miss the opportunity to diagnose the problem," said Chris Galen, spokesman for the federation.

Right now the government seems to be in the "denial" phase, but let's hope many people don't end up sick from New Variant CJD.

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Last edited by DaveSZ on Dec-26-2003 at 04:40

http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/diseases/cjd/bse_cjd_qa.htm

Questions and Answers Regarding Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE) and Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (CJD)


What is bovine spongiform encephalopathy?
Bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) is a progressive neurological disorder of cattle that results from infection by an unconventional transmissible agent.

Through the end of November 2003, more than 183,000 cases of BSE were confirmed in the United Kingdom alone in more than 35,000 herds. Regularly updated numbers of reported BSE cases, by country, are available on the website of the Office International Des Epizooties at: http://www.oie.int/eng/info/en_esb.htm.

The BSE epidemic in the United Kingdom peaked in January 1993 at almost 1,000 new cases per week. The outbreak may have resulted from the feeding of scrapie-containing sheep meat-and-bone meal to cattle. There is strong evidence and general agreement that the outbreak was amplified by feeding rendered bovine meat-and-bone meal to young calves.

The nature of the transmissible agent is unknown. Currently, the most accepted theory is that the agent is a modified form of a normal cell surface component known as prion protein. The pathogenic form of the protein is both less soluble and more resistant to enzyme degradation than the normal form.

Is BSE occurring in the United States?
On December 23, 2003, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced a presumptive diagnosis of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE, or "mad cow" disease) in an adult Holstein cow from Washington State. Samples were taken from the cow on December 9 as part of USDA's BSE surveillance program. The BSE diagnosis was made on December 22 and 23 by histopathology and immunohistochemical testing at the National Veterinary Services Laboratory, Ames, Iowa. Final confirmatory testing is pending at an international reference laboratory in England.

USDA has launched an epidemiologic investigation to determine the source of the disease. Preliminary investigations indicate that beef from the slaughtered cow has been prepared for human consumption. Beef products are being recalled from establishments that may have received these products.
To prevent BSE from entering the United States, severe restrictions were placed on the importation of live ruminants and certain ruminant products from countries where BSE was known to exist. These restrictions were later extended to include importation of ruminants and certain ruminant products from all European countries, Japan, and Israel.

Is BSE a foodborne hazard in the United States?
Strong evidence indicates that BSE has been transmitted to humans primarily in the United Kingdom, causing a variant form of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD). In the United Kingdom, where over 1 million cattle may have been infected with BSE, a substantial species barrier appears to protect humans from widespread illness. As of December 1, 2003, a total of 153 vCJD cases had been reported worldwide; of these, 143 cases had occurred in the United Kingdom. The risk to human health from BSE in the United States is extremely low.

Is there any monitoring of the incidence of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in the United States?
Yes. The possibility that BSE can spread to humans has focused increased attention on the desirability of enhancing national surveillance for Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) in the United States.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) monitors the trends and current incidence of CJD in the United States by analyzing death certificate information from U.S. multiple cause-of-death data, compiled by the National Center for Health Statistics, CDC. A summary of these data was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association on November 8, 2000 (Volume 284, No. 18, pp. 2322-3.

The average annual CJD death rate in the United States has remained relatively stable at about one case per million population per year. In addition, CJD deaths in persons aged <30 years in the United States remain extremely rare (<1 case per 100 million per year). In contrast, in the United Kingdom, over half of the patients who died with variant CJD were in this young age group.

What is the variant form of CJD that the experts in the United Kingdom believe might be related to the BSE outbreak in cattle?
In contrast to the classic form of CJD, the variant form in the United Kingdom predominantly affects younger persons (median age at death around 29 years) and has atypical clinical features. These atypical features include prominent psychiatric or sensory symptoms at the time of clinical presentation or early in the course of the illness, delayed onset of neurologic abnormalities, duration of illness of at least 6 months, and a diffusely abnormal non-diagnostic electroencephalogram.

The characteristic neuropathologic profile of variant CJD includes, in both the cerebellum and cerebrum, numerous kuru-type amyloid plaques surrounded by vacuoles and prion protein (PrP) accumulation at high concentration indicated by immunohistochemical analysis.

Recently published data indicate that the epidemic of variant CJD in the United Kingdom may have already reached a peak. A listing of monthly updated numbers of variant CJD cases in the United Kingdom is available at: http://www.doh.gov.uk/cjd/cjd_stat.htm.

Is there evidence directly linking this newly recognized variant of CJD to BSE exposure?
There is strong epidemiologic and laboratory evidence for a causal association between variant CJD and BSE. The absence of confirmed cases of variant CJD in other geographic areas free of BSE supports a causal association.

In addition, the interval between the most likely period for the initial extended exposure of the population to potentially BSE-contaminated food (1984-1986) and onset of initial variant CJD cases (1994-1996) is consistent with known incubation periods for CJD.

An experimental study reported in June 1996 showed that three cynomologus macaque monkeys inoculated with brain tissue obtained from cattle with BSE had clinical and neuropathological features strikingly similar to those of variant CJD (Nature 1996;381:743-4).

A study published in 1996 indicated that a Western blot analysis of infecting prions obtained from 10 variant CJD patients and BSE-infected animals had similar molecular characteristics that were distinct from prions obtained from patients with other types of CJD (Nature 1996;383:685-90).

An experimental study involving inoculation of a panel of inbred mice with the agents causing BSE and variant CJD substantially increased the strength of the scientific evidence for a causal association between variant CJD and BSE (Nature 1997;389:498-501). In this study, groups of inbred mice and a group of cross-bred mice inoculated with brain homogenates from variant CJD cases were reported to have had latency periods and lesion profiles consistent with the BSE pattern.

The latency period, neuropathology, and disease-causing PrP isoforms in transgenic mice expressing bovine PrP that were inoculated with variant CJD, BSE, and scrapie brain extracts provided additional evidence supporting the link between BSE and variant CJD (Proc Natl Acad Sci 1999;96:15137-42).

Has CDC initiated increased surveillance efforts to determine whether the newly recognized variant of CJD occurs in the United States?
Yes. In addition to the ongoing review of national CJD mortality data, CDC has conducted active CJD surveillance in its four established Emerging Infections Program areas (Minnesota, Oregon, Connecticut, and the San Francisco Bay area, California) and in a metropolitan Atlanta site.

Additionally, with the support of the Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists, CDC conducts follow-up review of clinical and neuropathology records of CJD decedents aged <55 years who are identified through the national mortality data analysis.

CDC, in collaboration with the American Association of Neuropathologists, established the National Prion Disease Pathology Surveillance Center at Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio in 1996. This pathology center provides free, state-of-the-art diagnostic services to U.S. physicians. It also helps to monitor the possible occurrence of emerging forms of prion diseases, such as variant CJD, in the United States. For more information about the center visit its website at: http://www.cjdsurveillance.com.

In 2002, CDC reported the occurrence of variant CJD in a 22-year-old Florida resident who was born in and grew up in the United Kingdom. Information about this patient is available at: http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5141a3.htm.

Is BSE a foodborne hazard for travelers to Europe?
The current risk for infection with the BSE agent among travelers to Europe is extremely small, if it exists at all. Information describing this risk is available in the document titled "Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy and Variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease" available on the CDC website at http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/diseases/cjd/bse_cjd.htm.

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Let's see...CJD from beef and Hepatitis from green onions. Guess I'll have to go back to eating dirt.

Like you said, that rates of infection in humans are so low I don't think it's anything to worry about. People are going to say that now eating beef is dangerous and we should stop. The thing is, driving a car is much more dangerous statistically speaking, and I don't see people giving up driving. It's all about taking a risk and hoping (or believing) that you won't be that one in a million. I'll take my chances because I do love that yummy meat.

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Originally posted by NeoPhono I'll take my chances because I do love that yummy meat.

Hehe, I read that and laughed

But I know what you mean though. People have been saying that for years in the UK, but people still eat as much of it as ever. I kinda gave up eating beef for a while, but then I realised that all the cattle that were infected were done so about ten years ago, so if anyone's gonna get BSE, they've already got it. Might as well not worry about it.

There's no more infected cattle in the UK now, so British beef is fairly safe to eat

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