quote:

Originally posted by anuneventrade The blame game is quite humorous. It's like dealing with five year olds when asking "who dropped the milk on the floor"!

"Pierre! Zis French bastard!"



on topic: Moooooh! LOL when they had this issue in Europe I would resort to eating McChicken only for several months

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heh some one said it may have been a terrorist attack

my mspaint image of this idea


so syria is next right?

What I Learned Today About Mad Cow Disease
a.k.a BSE (Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy)

I'm beginning to think that these FDA people don't completely know what they're talking about/dealing with, but here is what I have learned through today about BSE.

BSE was a major problem in the U.K. in the late 80's/early 90's.
Cattle that become infected usually do so by eating feedstock that has been manufactured with used cow parts(i.e. old cow carcasses). The infectous part of the cow is the brain and spinal cord--i.e. there are cow brains and some spinal cords in cow feed(aren't these creatures herbivores?? ah, that's another topic).

Humans can supposedly only get the disease by eating the infected part of the cow--they have to actually ingest part of a cow's brain or spinal cord(sounds like an episode of Fear Factor the contestants ate boiled horse rectum but I digress). Apparently when they slaughter cattle, sometimes some bits & pieces of the infected cow can get in the meat (Can anyone clarify if this includes a T-bone?). Anyway, it would seem that it is relatively difficult to contract the disease, but Mad Cow tends to put the fear of God into people and a few rare cases could instill panic in a large amount of people in a short amount of time. The story does get more interesting though.

Cows in the U.S. aren't tracked as rigorously as in other countries since they're so heavily traded as a commodity, and as a result it can be particularly difficult to trace a cow through it's lifetime from birth to slaughter, making it much more difficult to track the offspring of a potentially infected mother among other things(perhaps we've found a new darkside to Capitalism, but again, I digress).

Another point of note. in 1997 there was established, a regulation, that outlawed the use of other cows in feedstock for cows (the herbivores--the irony is killing me). This is getting curious.

Another point of note. The sole cow so far in the U.S. to be reported with BSE is a Holstein cow, that is she's a dairy cow, used for milk, so there's not a direct connection to the meat supply, and there has been no evidence of milk-based disease transmission(but still scary).

Anyway, don't dispair, there is a test available that can be administered to cows to test for the disease (actually, I believe there are 2). These tests cost a farmer about $15 apiece and although there is no cure for BSE so the cows would just be slaughtered and taken out of circulation. Great, then what? Are they gonna throw them back in the feedstock? damn, already blew that option. Are they gonna just incenerate them and then have the skies raining Mad Cow ashes on the world and turning people into Zombies? Somebody get my therapist and a conspiracy theorist!

Oh, but wait, there's a rub or two. First, the incubation period of the disease in the animal...it's about 4-6 years. Animals can't be tested until they're at least 30 months in age (2.5 years if you have an MBA). This is why in Europe cows under 30 months are not tested.

And the up-shot: In the U.S. cows are usually slaughtered when they are under 20 months of age. In fact, only 12% of U.S. cattle are slaughtered over 20 months. How much is 12%? 12% is a lot of cows. 36 million cows to be semi-precise. That leaves an approximate addressable market of about 4-6 million cows available for testing (That's a lot of could be mad cows).

Then the FDA comes out today and says the specific cow in questionwas born in April of 1997--80 months mind you--yes, the same year that the "no more feeding herbivores more herbivores" rule went into effect. Ah, but let's complicate things a bit. I believe they said the infected cow came from Canada. My this story is interesting--I thought our tracking practices in the U.S. were supposed to be bad to non-existent? How is that the case, yet we can supposedly trace a statistically old cow back to birth? In another country of origin, no less? I'm beginning to think someone is blowing smoke up someone elses' ass to buy more time here.

My question is could this disease manifest itself anymore slowly??? This sounds like a lot of BS to me. I mean 4-6 years of infection before cows are symptomatic. Not exactly the Grand Canyon, but not exactly a small window of possibility either! Leave it to those rascally U.S. commodities traders to try to beat the disease to the death punch by killing them before the disease can get to them.

This cow was born in April of '97. She couldn't have been eating other cows for long, yet it took her 6 years to be symptomatic? (rethinking the Grand Canyon comment) Is an asymptomatic infected cow as infectuous to humans as a symptomatic infected cow? If she's a milk cow, why did she eat need to eat feedstock that was made with other cow parts? What ever happened to hay? Why are cows being fed to other cows?? PETA should have the field day of a lifetime with this one.


Conclusion: I need to get my cholesterol down, I can avoid beef for a while. I'll keep an umbrella handy just in case; you never know what may happen 28 Days Later.

Last edited by Shakka on Dec-30-2003 at 19:28

Mmmmm yes noboody eat meat ... more for me. Anyway to answer your questions as to how they were able to track it, they can perform DNA tests to identify the originating herd, and additionally, apparentely they can also simply look at the ear tag, duh, to find out where the cow came from:

quote:

DeHaven said investigators hope to use the stricken cow's DNA samples to confirm their preliminary determination that the animal entered the United States from the Canadian province of Alberta in 2001 with a herd of 81 cows. Testing also will trace the history of those other cows. Earlier officials said 73 cows from the herd were being traced. Investigators have matched the cow's ear tag to a Canadian herd, but the Canadian Food Inspection Agency said it was unclear that the cow was the same one that became sick, or even that the infected animal had come from Canada. http://edition.cnn.com/2003/US/12/29/mad.cow/index.html

And the answer as for why they were fed meat prior to 1997 is because dead cow stuff is cheaper than hay/grain/whatever.

At any rate there has been only one suspected case of BSE in the US ever. A florida resident appears to have contracted it ... a Florida resident who lived in the UK for 13 years before moving to the US in 1992. I'm so frightened that I ran out to the store today and bought an extra roll of duct tape just to be safe.

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

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actually i think the DNA test has NOT COME BACK YET. so they dont know for sure.

quote:

Originally posted by Shakka What I Learned Today About Mad Cow Disease a.k.a BSE (Bovine Spongiform Encephalitis) I believe they said the infected cow came from Canada. My this story is interesting--I thought our tracking practices in the U.S. were supposed to be bad to non-existent? How is that the case, yet we can supposedly trace a statistically old cow back to birth? In another country of origin? I'm beginning to think someone is blowing smoke up someone elses' ass to buy more time here.

Actually I read an explanation to that one yesterday from one of the google news links (of course I can't seem to find the correct one anymore).

Apparently the ear tags of the cow was somehow saved and thus the farm in Canada from where the cow came from could be traced. The owner of the farm had been in the business for some 40 odd years or something. The cow was sold only because the farmer was retiring and thus he needed to sell all his live stock. Most importantly though, the farmer had always kept very tidy records of about anything that went down on that farm. The health inspectors said that this was an exoptordinary text-book example of how things should be done on every farm.

With his books he could trace back every single cow he had two or more generations, mapping out a family tree if you want. So, when the farm was located due to the ear tags it was very easy to get the rest of the facts regarding the cow.

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There was like 31-32 nations that immediately banned the import of US beef after one of our cows had the Mad Cow disease, except Canada of course which already has a history of infecting themselves and others.
Well, we can say screw them, ban the export of all friggin' food to those countries, and approve the export of friggin' bombs to them instead!
{{{smoke}}}

quote:

Originally posted by smokeape There was like 31-32 nations that immediately banned the import of US beef after one of our cows had the Mad Cow disease, except Canada of course which already has a history of infecting themselves and others. Well, we can say screw them, ban the export of all friggin' food to those countries, and approve the export of friggin' bombs to them instead! {{{smoke}}}

Ok, so by your logic, you should therefore decide to bomb Astralia, whom you are about to sign a free trade agreement with, and who is one of the last weston nations still supporting you in the 'war on terror'. We have been sending troops to Iraq/Afganistan etc, all the time whilst we are bogged down in East Timor and the Solomon Islands. We're also one of the few countries who are helping/participating in the 'star wars' missile defence plan with you.

Yep, sounds like a great reason to bomb us! The US has already alianated most of the world, why not alianate your allies to top it all off.

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oh artic, lighten up and take a bad joke.

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quote:

Originally posted by Yoepus oh artic, lighten up and take a bad joke.

After seeing some of his other posts, I seriously don't know if this is a joke or not.

Ah yes, love the sig.

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