"Moooooooooooo!"
Posted on 11/18/2004 9:16:29 PM PST by neverdem
A possible new case of mad cow disease has been found in the United States, the Agriculture Department said yesterday.
The agency said the brain of a cow tested positive three times on a rapid test for the presence of prions, the misfolded proteins that cause the disease.
The department considers the rapid test inconclusive. The results await confirmation by more complex tests, and experts expect those to take four to seven days at the National Veterinary Services Laboratory in Ames, Iowa.
A food safety expert who frequently criticizes the testing program said the results made it almost certain that the cow was infected. The expert, Dr. Michael K. Hansen, a senior research associate at Consumers Union, put the chances of an error at one in 100,000.
Infected or not, the animal "did not enter the food or feed chain," said Dr. Andrea Morgan, associate deputy administrator of the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, part of the Agriculture Department.
Dr. Morgan refused to say where the cow had died or exactly why it was tested.
On Dec. 23, the department set off international alarms when it announced that a dairy cow slaughtered on Dec. 9 in Moses Lake, Wash., had tested positive on the slower tests then in use. By that time, the cow's meat had been ground into hamburger, mixed into a 10,000-pound shipment and sold.
Investigators determined that the cow was born in Canada before a ban on feed made with cattle or sheep protein began in 1997, and there was no American panic over beef. But the world closed its doors to American beef exports, a $3 billion business.
In June, after sustained criticism, the department adopted tests like those used overseas that give results in three to six hours. The rapid tests are most useful for stopping suspect carcasses at the slaughterhouse, where animals are normally chilled for 24 hours after killing to firm the meat for cutting.
The department says it hopes to test 268,000 animals by the end of next year, up from 20,000 in 2003. About 36 million head of steers, cows and bulls are slaughtered each year.
In a report to Congress in July, the inspector general of the department criticized the new testing as inadequate, saying it was voluntary and called for checking too few animals, especially too few healthy-looking ones. Any positive cases would undermine the statistical model on which the plan is based, the inspector general said.
When it expanded testing, the Agriculture Department warned that other infected animals might be found. But it reassured the public that the beef supply was safe, an assurance that Dr. Morgan repeated yesterday after the new case was reported. The department refused to give the age or breed of the animal or say where it died or why it was tested, other than to confirm that, in Dr. Morgan's words, it was "part of the targeted high-risk population."
A spokesman for the department, Jim Rogers, said that could mean that the cow had symptoms of brain disease; that it was a "downer," meaning too sick or injured to walk; or that it had died on a farm.
Animals with advanced mad cow disease have a hopping gait and tremors, and they are aggressive. But other brain-attacking illnesses like rabies or cancer can produce similar symptoms. Also, the prions of mad cow have been found in relatively young, symptom-free animals.
The brain of the suspect cow will be sent to the laboratory in Iowa for an immunohistochemisty test, a procedure that agriculture officials routinely call "the gold standard." Brain sections are sliced thin, stained and inspected microscopically for signs of disease. The accuracy depends on the expertise of the examiner.
In July, the department said that it had two other "inconclusives," based on one positive rapid test. Those animals later proved negative for the disease, and the cattle industry complained that the public had been unnecessarily scared.
The department changed part of its policy and required more than one positive rapid test to even call a result inconclusive.
In the rapid test, a bit of brain stem is extracted and ground up. Enzymes that digest normal prions are added, leaving only the misfolded ones. Then antibodies that clump around misfolded prions are added. But false positives can result when some normal prions are incompletely digested, so the test is usually run three times.
IN A RELATED STORY OF HALF-CRAZED LUNATIC-RIDDEN MANIAC MAMMALS, the NY Times reported a few million NYC rats were also upset.
FReepmail me if you want on or off my health and science ping list.
This is just a conspiracy created by PETA to make us eat veggies and franken-foods.
I thought the mad cow was at the Clintoon Library and interviewed by Peter Jennings...
Know how you can tell if a cow has mad cow disease?
It go's Moooooooooooooo,damn it!
Hush, nobody tell Hillary. She thinks she won't be going to Iowa until the 2008 primaries.
Behave.
Judging from the photo, she sure had a lot of hair when she was born.
BTTT!!!!!!
Big teeth too! How long did she stay in there?
LOL
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