What happened to BSE?

sovtek

Is it just me or is it highly curious that the whole bombshell of BSE in America has completely dropped off the news as quickly as it arose?

dahamsta

It's still there, it's just not being covered by the major outlets. Michael Powell's legacy.

adam

Sarky

SARS and terrorism came along. They're much more fun to sensationalise.

mike65

I would'nt get too hung up on conspiracy theories, at this point BSE is'nt anything "new" and only a couple of
cases have been pinpointed so far and they have been blamed on Canadian Bacon!

Plus as has been noted other, more exciting TV friendly events have been under way. When BSC goes from a trickle to a steady stream just wait for the ****e to hit the fan...(its not gone away here btw)

Mike.

dahamsta

Originally posted by mike65
I would'nt get too hung up on conspiracy theories, at this point BSE is'nt anything "new" and only a couple of cases have been pinpointed so far and they have been blamed on Canadian Bacon!

Nearly, but not quite, a half a million hits.

Plus as has been noted other, more exciting TV friendly events have been under way. When BSC goes from a trickle to a steady stream just wait for the ****e to hit the fan...(its not gone away here btw)

With the way they're going I wouldn't be at all surprised, and of course it'll be a hell of a lot harder to contain over there. As if they don't have enough on their plate. (Pardon the pun.)

adam

Capt'n Midnight

Actually the main reason why so few US cattle have tested positive is that so few cattle have ever been tested...
While the U.S. tests one cow out of about every 18,000 slaughtered, countries like Japan and Ireland are testing every cow going to market. While the U.S. doubled the total numbers of cows tested to about 4,000 a year in 2002, the European Union tested over 8 million cows during the same period
http://www.testcowsnow.com/

The type of testing methods now used in the U.S. have been shown to miss prions detected by the more advanced testing methods employed in Europe. (A prion is a microscopic protein particle similar to a virus but lacking nucleic acid, thought to be the infectious agent responsible for BSE and certain other degenerative diseases of the nervous system.)

Germany, which long proclaimed itself "BSE-free" using the same type of testing the US currently utilizes, did not discover its first mad cow cases until it began using the more sensitive testing procedures.

The U.S. currently uses Western Blot analyses, Immunohistochemistry, and histopathology, which are more labor intensive and take longer than the newer tests. They require removing a portion of the brain, sectioning it, staining it with dye, and examining how the dye has interacted with the tissue, or simply examining sections of brain tissue.

The U.S. also is presently testing only 1 out of every 18,000 cows slaughtered, whereas countries like Switzerland test 1 out of every 60 cows.

Countries like Ireland test more than twice as many cows in one night as the U.S. tests in an entire year. http://www.vegsource.com/articles/bse_usda.htm

daveirl

This post has been deleted.

Matt Simis

Originally posted by Sarky
SARS and terrorism came along. They're much more fun to sensationalise.

Well, it would appear Boardsies are just as guilty as the media. This thread has 70ish views, the one about the BA Flight (Terrorism Related) has 1100+ views...



Matt

projectmayhem

Originally posted by Matt Simis
Well, it would appear Boardsies are just as guilty as the media. This thread has 70ish views, the one about the BA Flight (Terrorism Related) has 1100+ views...



Matt

people are swung by what's on sky news

dahamsta

Imagine if we had Fox too!

Originally posted by dahamsta
Imagine if we had Fox too!

It's in nearly 300,000 homes here already with sky digital;)

On topic, There was a huge furore when ophra winfrey raised this subject a few years ago

sceptre

That False Disparagement of Perishable Food Products Act is just er, mad. Like the cows in Texas:D (sceptre prepares to get sued)

Reading Fast Food Nation would have been enough to put me off eating US beef forever, even though Schlosser didn't really tackle BSE (there were plenty of other diseases brought about by US meat packing plants' apparent lack of hygiene to tackle).

Capn Midnight's links were pretty interesting to read - it's easy to declare a country BSE-free if you don't actually test for the damn thing.

Victor

Originally posted by daveirl
Ah well, at this stage we were all supposed to have contracted CJD, just like the threat of AIDS (at least to the western world) was overblown in the 80s, CJD was in the 90s

Mooooooo

daveirl

This post has been deleted.

sceptre

1.3 meg download but might be worth a read

Geromino

Originally posted by sceptre
That False Disparagement of Perishable Food Products Act is just er, mad. Like the cows in Texas:D (sceptre prepares to get sued)

Reading Fast Food Nation would have been enough to put me off eating US beef forever, even though Schlosser didn't really tackle BSE (there were plenty of other diseases brought about by US meat packing plants' apparent lack of hygiene to tackle).

Capn Midnight's links were pretty interesting to read - it's easy to declare a country BSE-free if you don't actually test for the damn thing.

So, how do you account for the fact that contracting BSE in US cattle is extremely low. A study conducted by Harvard University on Risk Assessment made that conclusion. However, an independent review is currently underway to verify the accuracy of the roport. Also keep in mind is that the cow came from Canada and was part of the Canadian Territory of Alberta that had Mad Cow disease conducted in May 2002. Here are a list of some web sites that have a more comprehensive conclusion:
http://www.avma.org/onlnews/javma/feb02/s020102a.asp
http://www.ift.org/publications/docshop/ft_shop/ 01-02/01_02_pdfs/01-02-proc.pdf
http://www.cce.cornell.edu/food/fsarchives/ 111201/harvardbse.html
http://www.aphis.usda.gov/lpa/issues/bse/bse-riskassmt.html
http://www.animalprotein.org/news_articles/franco_bse.htm

The last URL gives an analysis of the study. I think you might find it more interesting than Capt'nMidnight.

sceptre

Originally posted by Geromino
So, how do you account for the fact that contracting BSE in US cattle is extremely low.

Quite easily. BSE has until recently been an EU phenonemon. European governments initially reacted very badly to the possibility of their cattle being infected. The safeguards and checks have only been introduced properly and extended in the past few years. These days the safeguards are actually pretty reliable, meaning that BSE-infected cattle are very likely (read as "almost certain") to be caught before they enter the food chain. Meanwhile, in the US, the USDA are assuming that the disease isn't present and aren't testing enough cattle. In other words, they don't and can't actually know that the disease isn't present - the Harvard study actually raises the possibility that it is. Oh it says it's fairly unlikely but you don't know, they don't know because they can't as they haven't checked enough cattle. The incubation period for humans is long enough that the only method of checking is to test the cattle. They're not testing anywhere near enough of them - during 2003 only 12500 cattle were tested. Ha! It wouldn't be an adequate sample if you were buying bags of cocaine and it isn't an adequate sample if you're eating cattle.

From your Harvard link (incidentally, your Cornell link is broken):

If an outbreak of BSE were to occur, it would most likely be eliminated within 20 years after its introduction.

Oh, that's nice to know. 20 years and "most likely". Wonderful.

Geromino

Originally posted by sceptre
Quite easily. BSE has until recently been an EU phenonemon. European governments initially reacted very badly to the possibility of their cattle being infected. The safeguards and checks have only been introduced properly and extended in the past few years. These days the safeguards are actually pretty reliable, meaning that BSE-infected cattle are very likely (read as "almost certain") to be caught before they enter the food chain. The USDA are assuming that the disease isn't present and aren't testing enough cattle. In other words, they don't and can't actually know that the disease isn't present. The incubation period for humans is long enough that the only method of checking is to test the cattle. They're not testing anywhere near enough of them - during 2003 only 12500 cattle were tested. Ha! It wouldn't be an adequate sample if you were buying bags of cocaine and it isn't an adequate sample if you're eating cattle.

From your Harvard link (incidentally, your Cornell link is broken):

Oh, that's nice to know. 20 years and "most likely". Wonderful.

It would all depend on the sampling techniques Spectre. However, there are significant differences between the production of beef in the US than that of the EU. Here is an excerpt.:

"In spite of what occurred in the UK and other western European countries, there are major differences in animal and meat product handling in England versus the United States. With the relatively higher grain costs in western Europe, compared to the United States, cattle raisers depended much more on the nutritional value of animal by-products, such as meat and bone meal, than on soy-protein sources which are abundant in the United States. Although the exact source of the BSE agent is still in question, most experts agree that the spread of the disease was by the feeding of contaminated ruminant by-products. Feeding of ruminant by-products to other ruminants was prohibited in the United States in 1997, and feed mills are inspected by FDA for compliance. In the United States the numbers of sheep entering the slaughter chain relative to the volume of cattle, pigs, and other animals is also quite small relative to the proportion of that seen in the UK when BSE began. If indeed the presence of scrapie in the meat and bone meal being fed to cattle was the source of the first BSE cases, the situation here was, and is, very different from that of the UK"

As you can see, this knowledge with proper sampling techniques provide a more accurate analysis.

Capt'n Midnight

It does not matter how low the risk is, because
it can be fatal
it's almost totally preventable
the procedures that prevent it could prevent a more contageous disese later on (eg: TB is acquiring multi drug resistance..)

There is a chance that more inspection of food will pick up more things we don't know about. Remember that survey in the UK where they tested minced pork and found that a large percentage of it actually contained beef ! And you aren't forgetting about parasites that live in meat - worms & flukes etc.


look at foot and mouth - again low transmission rate and it's only mildly irratating to humans (blisters - goes away in a few weeks - only one case in the UK in the 60's etc.)

And as for the FDA approving it - they also approve high levels of growth hormones in food and GMO - IMHO they are too biased in favour of US big business than in consumer safety.

I can also pick links off the internet
voila - http://www.nisbett.com/news/h-news15.htm
A few more leads to chase down...