Mad Cow Disease In The USA

The discovery of an infected cow, news not more than a day old, has already struck the beef market, with potential losses of billions of dollars.

At this time, 11 countries have already banned the import of USA beef. The value of the beef industry and restaurants in the stock market has been affected. While it is headline news, many may not understand the impact. Already, the democrats have been quick to jump on the republicans, since the republican administration is the one that has lifted the restrictions on processing "downer" cows for meat. Downer cows, as they're called, are cows that are unable to walk to their slaughter, and have to be assisted; such are the symptoms of the infected animals. In reality, such processing does better enable the testing of potentially infected animals. Already, due to a news series by a Pacific Northwest TV news network, critical of processing "downers" has totally eliminated the legitimate processing of such in Oregon, Washington and Idaho. With that industry gone, testing for the disease has basically come to a halt.

It takes four or five years for the symptoms in cows to become evident, so it's necessary to not only follow the history of the animal to find the source of contaminated feed, but also locating all the animals that shared the same history.

The media in their competitive efforts to be the first with the story managed to claim yesterday that the cow wasn't destined for the food industry. Today's story indicates that it was, and has been processed with parts of the animal being sent to as many as three meat processing plants.

welcome to the club, USA /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/frown.gif
I had hoped this crisis was over ...
bernhard /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/icon23.gif

Well I don't normally "panic/react"...however - I will indeed cut down my consumption of beef. As it is, my family's diet is heavy on poultry/fish/pork anyway. It shouldn't be hard to decrease the amount of beef that we eat.

We'll probably do this at least until more information is released. I imagine it's a potential "nightmare". I understand that the "agencies" involved don't want a public "panic reaction" and I sometimes "worry" about how much and what sort of (perhaps misinformation or "lack of")information is being released.

Hopefully we've learned a lesson about how the government in Britain acted and will not wait too late to investigate and do the "right" thing. If it involves destruction of a large number of animals, it's a sad fact that will have to be dealt with. 137 British citizens died as a result of a "late decision"...if the newscast reported correctly?

Yea, this kind of sucks. But there are a few salient points to take home from the actual document.

First this is a "preliminary" positive. This is akin to the quick test they can do for strep throat in a few minutes in the office. They tell you that you have it and send you home with drugs only to call you in 48 hours when the real lab test result comes back to tell you that you don't have it after all. There is a lab in England that is currently doing the real lab test and they expect results back to confirm or rule it out very soon.

Secondly, the "epidemic" in the UK has infected in total 143 people. Thats not to downplay the seriousness to those 143 people, but don't stick your finger down your throat looking for that burger you had for lunch. All over the world there are only 10 more cases than that on record.

Thirdly, the US enacted rules that control how and what you can feed to cows in 1997. The spread of infection in cows and other animals comes from feeding them the offal from processed cows. Kind of gross thought anyway, we used to grind up the leftovers from cow processing and feed it back to the cows! Well, they don't do that anymore and so it is extremely unlikely that this is going to spread and cause any kind of wide spread problems like in the UK. Although their handling of the problem cost them much more than was really necessary as it was ultimately treated like a political problem and not a public health issue.

That being said, if their random testing managed to find one case, there are certainly more. I will be very interested to watch and see if this cow actually has the thing, and then how it got it! It could be that someone wasn't following those feed rules from 1997. It will be interesting to find out!

We're a lot like Sigman's family around here, much more chicken and pork and fish than beef anyway, but we were due for an expensive trip to a nice steak house. Even though the risk is negligible, we'll probably be putting that off for a bit anyway...


EDIT: more "ruminations" (get it?! Ruminations, ruminants? Oh never mind...) If you're a betting man, now would probably be a GREAT time to buy some cattle futures. The price of beef in America is going up up up due to several factors. You can read about it elsewhere if you want. If this is causing the price to plummet and you can pick up a few thousand head on the cheap, AND if it turns out that this was the only cow involved AND the market rebounds when the news comes out that it's a non-issue and the price goes back up /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif Thats a lot of IF's and AND's and thats futures trading! LOL, hmmm.... perhaps I'll head over to B/S/T to raise a little money for a project... /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif

Group buy? /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif PayPal sent...

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James S said:
EDIT: more "ruminations" (get it?! Ruminations, ruminants? Oh never mind...) If you're a betting man, now would probably be a GREAT time to buy some cattle futures. The price of beef in America is going up up up due to several factors. You can read about it elsewhere if you want. If this is causing the price to plummet and you can pick up a few thousand head on the cheap, AND if it turns out that this was the only cow involved AND the market rebounds when the news comes out that it's a non-issue and the price goes back up /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif Thats a lot of IF's and AND's and thats futures trading! LOL, hmmm.... perhaps I'll head over to B/S/T to raise a little money for a project... /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif

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You mean like "if" this is the only case, and "if" the beef is really safe like they say, or "if" only a 137 people die, and "if" it has been contained, or "if" we can count on truthful reporting from our government?
But how will we know when it doesn't even show up until months, or even years after exposure? What were you doing, and where exactly did you go, and what all did you eat 4 years ago? /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/cool.gif

Ok...let's hold up on the "Group Buy" for now! /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif

I'd think the number of factors involved would make speculating difficult. Even with one confirmed case, or even suspected, export will stop since the other countries will ban US beef. That will leave a glut on the domestic market. Then consider reluctance by domestic buyers, and again you have a supply that exceeds demand.

On the flip side, you have less beef when the USDA requires the destruction and recall of tons of beef in order to insure the destruction of any suspect meat. Then it's possible that ranchers could drop out and opt for different stock. I can't say anything for sure, since there's a lot of unknowns, coupled with an extreme ignorance of the situation on my part.

Just from casual reading, it doesn't appear that the major cuts of beef are the big health risk factors. It's the processed meats like cold cuts and frankfurters that might include brain stems and portions of the central nervous system. Like I said, that's just from casual reading. Don't stake your life on my interpretation. I wouldn't want you contacting me in four or five years telling me I killed you with lousy info. Use your own good judgement; use good common sense, but don't overreact.

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Empath said:
I wouldn't want you contacting me in four or five years telling me I killed you with lousy info.

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I for one, promise not to contact you in four or five years if I'm dead. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif

@Bravo25: Those are some very good points. In fact there is evidence that there has been mad cow disease in the U.S. for several years now, and it has been played down (covered up) by the beef industry because they knew that what is happening now would happen if it was highly publicized, I.E. the banning of U.S. beef. Ted Turner is believed to have played a big part in the coverup because he owns a very big chunk of the beef industry and he also owns a very big chunk of the mainstream media.

Also, the military apparently knew about this for at least a few years now to because they did some testing on patients in a veterans hospital a few years back that were originally diagnosed as having alzheimer's disease, because the symptoms are nearly identical to those of alzheimers. If I recall correctly, somewhere around 6% of the patients that they thought had died of alzheimers had actually died of the human form of mad cow disease instead.

The reason that this seems to be such an unknown is that there is no set policy for testing alzheimers patients for mad cow disease at the time of their death. For those that don't know, the only definitive test for mad cow is to take a tissue sample from the affected areas and it is quite an expensive procedure. Until the government starts some sort of policy for testing alzheimers patients for mad cow disease at the time of their death, we may never know exactly how prevalent this problem really is in this country.

If anyone here knows of any group or government agency that is currently testing for the disease in deceased alzheimers patients then please let us all know. I would be very interested to know of any such program because as far as I've been able to find, there are no such programs that are currently active.

If I recall correctly, I still have some papers that I got in biology class a few years back on that previously mentioned test at that veterans hospital. I'll see if I can dig them up, but they are probably buried in a pile of papers somewhere around here.

Needless to say, mad cow disease appears to be a much larger problem than the mainstream media is willing to let on to, for some very obvious reasons. I have to say, it scared the crap out of me when I first learned about it a few years ago and I'm still very troubled by it, but like most everyone else, I still continue to eat beef. I just hope that it's not a decision that I will come to regret someday after it's too late, seeing as how there is no cure and given the nature of the disease, even if it could be cured at some point in the future, by the time that you show the symptoms of it, the damage is completely irreversible.

Also worth noting, the prions that cause the disease are nearly indestructible, even by very high temperature fire! Another troubling aspect is the fact that these things can contaminate the very ground where an infected animal is buried so that for many years it is not safe for a cow to eat the grass growing on the contaminated ground. These are a couple of the reasons that this stuff is dang near impossible to get rid of. Even burning an animal at anywhere near normal temperatures won't necessarily destroy it. This is some very fascinating, and at the same time, some very scary stuff indeed.

Deleted.
My apologies to XCalBR8. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/blush.gif

Prime rib for me tonight at McGuire's Irish Pub, a Pensacola landmark. They serve Prime and it was great. I will wait a while before I start to worry. How can you not eat smoked prime rib you can cut with a fork?

http://www.mcguiresirishpub.com/frames.html

Deleted by X-CalBR8. Apology accepted. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif

X-Cal,

I'm afraid you're quite wrong about the prions being well nigh indestructible. Prions are in the simplest sense, self replicating protein strands that tend to favor the alpha helix over the beta sheet folded configuration. It is no more indestructible than any other protein. High temperature and acids will denature or destroy these proteins. The problem is, because the alpha form of this protein is so stable, cooking temperatures will not destroy it. However, charring or burning it will readily destroy it. But in that case, it is no longer food. Of course, affecting the necessary heat or acidity conditions inside of a person afflicted with HSE would kill the person, thus the mortality side of the equation. How do I know this? I studied BSE, kuru, scrapie, and CJD spongiform encephalopathies in biochemistry.

Wilkey

BTW, If there's one case, there are thousands upon thousands. If you're at all fmailiar with the concept of a feedlot, you'll understand why.

OUCH!!

Just a few notes on the current "Mad Cow" situation.

Since 1997, number of diagnosed cases in the United States from Jakob-Creutzfeldt disease and Jakob-Creutzfeldt disease Bovine Variant

Total--597 Number of Bovine Variant cases in U.S. --0


Cases all received and diagnosed by the National Prion Disease Pathology Surveillance Center
597 total -- All either Familiar or Sporadic J-K, no Bovine Variant.

J-K is tracked by the CDC and by the National Prion Disease Pathology Surveillance Center.

In Great Britain, there have been 927 deaths to date since 1990 from J-K variants, but only 137 due to Bovine Variant J-K with more than 180,000 head of cattle destroyed due to infection or suspected infection.

For each human who has died, roughly 1500 cattle have been found to have the suspected/diagnosed disease.

Lets all relax, enjoy Christmas with our loved ones and let the scientists figure out if this really is vJ-K and what we should do about it.

Merry Christmas,

Bill

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Also worth noting, the prions that cause the disease are nearly indestructible, even by very high temperature fire!

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This, at the very least, is true. You can't make contaminated meat safe from a prion by cooking it.

And I'll certainly be re-reading the labels on my favorite processed meat food products and mad cow or not, leaving out the ones that contain brain stem or other interesting tissue, YUCK.

As far as covering the one up with the other. As they progress the symptoms diverge quite a bit with CJD causing many more physical manifestations like twitching and such. Most obvious difference is that you don't usually die from Alzheimers. It may take 5 years or much longer from first noticeable onset of symptoms till severe dementia. With CJD death averages something like 14 months after diagnosis. So a review of history should reveal obvious differences in the 2. There is still no good way to tell the difference with a scan though. They are almost able to do with this with Alzheimers and there are a few markers that they are starting to study for CJD, but it's still an iffy thing. Only real way for either is once the person is done with the brain in question...

Ginseng: Thanks for the info. If I find my papers from my old biology class, I will try to find the exact temperature that it takes to destroy it. I just remember that it was *very* high. I've even read that burning an affected cow will not entirely destroy it. That was the point that I was trying to get across earlier, that it is very very hard to completely destroy it.

once when i was younger i made faces at some cows .piised them off pretty good

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