Meat of Infected Cow Found in More States

News-Journal ^ | 12/28/2003 | AP

[TruthNtegrity]

Here in No. Va, far, far away from the nine states where this infected meat was distributed, beef was down $2-3 a pound on the wholesale market today.

Cheaper beef is on the way, if you care to eat it.

I'm going back to poultry and fish, thanks.

[ladyinred]

Reading these things grosses me out more than it scares me. Who eats cow brains anyway? Yuk.

[TruthNtegrity]

There is a suspicion on the part of some bio/chem guys I know that the Mad Cow disease in Europe was a bio-terrorism attack and just never declared as one. The widespread nature of the disease was not thought to be possible - unless there was purposeful contamination of the feed.

Unfortunately, I don't have a link or source for you to check. I read it on a Navy Intel board by a trusted source.

[Libertina]

The F&DA is now thinking of doing this. (duh) I doubt there is much chance of getting sick from this beef - good grief, more people die of flu. HOWEVER, I cannot understand how ANYONE could render a SICK animal for consumption... especially in human food. Nor do I see common sense in feeding meat products to herbivores.

[Cold Heat]

Can our pets get this?

I don't think so, but you never know.

This cow that apparently weighed over 5 tons!, is everywhere!:-)

[Cold Heat]

SICK animal

It was not sick. It had a broken pevis from birthing a calf.

It was tested because it was a downer and all downers are tested regardless of the reason for being off their feet.

It was a good catch by the government and I really don't see a reason to test all the animals. It seems this disease is all but eliminated and in a couple years, it will be as the remaining cattle that had any potential exposure will have been eliminated.

[Cold Heat]

Who eats cow brains anyway?

The Europeans do. I was raised on brains and eggs for breakfast.

My grandparents came from Yugoslavia.

[Enterprise]

It WILL take an act of Congress. However, Congress already sidestepped it due to pressure from the meat industry. I'm betting that even a mad cow scare won't be enough to get Congress to do something.

[Libertina]

Thank you for that clarification. I had heard it couldn't walk because it was sick.

[semaj]

"Burn it and be done with it."

You would think. But according to a documentary on the subject I saw a few years ago, the protein molecule that causes the disease is virtually indestructible, even when put to a temperature of 2000 degrees F.

[exDemMom]

injecting it into mice and waiting about 700 days for any symptoms to develop.

That's almost 2 years; do mice really live that long?

[sweetliberty]

3 years is about the average life span of a mouse, although one source says 2.

[Fury]

My questions: How can Sundlof possibly know this (i.e. "... half a gram")? What is the basis for his statement?

For the TSE that affects sheep and goats (scrapie), studies were conducted which used brain tissue (going on memory, will look up when I get home) from a sheep infected with scrapie being surgically implanted into a healthy sheep's brain, with the recipient sheep at some point testing positive and eventually demonstrating clinical signs for scrapie. I believe the amount of the brain tissue used was very small in weight/size.

[Phaedrus]

The USDA's much ballyhooed new measures to address the emergence of mad cow disease in the US are wholly inadequate. Until there is a complete and total ban on all feeding of slaughterhouse waste to livestock, coupled with the testing of millions of animals, mad cow disease will continue to amplifying and spread in US animal feed and among livestock. Eventually we will see cases of human mad cow disease emerging. It was a decade after the recognition of the first mad cow in Britain that the human deaths, continuing today, began appearing.

It's the Cow Feed, Stupid!