Posted on 01/11/2005 3:06:17 PM PST by youngtory
We can close the border to cattle so why can't it be closed for illegals and terrorists?
If we tagged illegals and shipped them in trucks to a designated location and kept them penned there we probably could.
Looking for obligatory pic of Michael MOOre...
This disease is such a horrible way to die, it scares the hell out of me.
I watched a documentary about people with mad cow in Britain, it was horrible. They showed a young lady who had CJB(Mad Cow) and she was barely able to walk, the nurses had to pick her up. They asked her what day it was she said Thursday, it was then really Tuesday. The young lady died a few weeks later. It was indeed horrible.
"They asked her what day it was she said Thursday, it was then really Tuesday."
I might have mad cow. I never have any idea what day or time it ever is.
I believe that we could avoid this if we would just go ahead and test all animals at slaughter as Japan has done.
Not only would this be expensive and disruptive, the results wouldn't be reliable. Because of the incubation period of BSE, no animal under 2 years of age would test positive, even though it might test positive later in its life. The bulk of grain-fed animals in the US will be slaughtered long before they reach 24 months and many of them before they reach 20 months.
I disagree about the reprise of Britains history occuring here. First of all North Americans don't tend to eat brains as much as the Euro's do and since there has NEVER been any BSE prions found in beef muscle meats, unless you have a taste for brain your much more likely to be struck by lightning. In addition, the bans on feeding ruminant by-products to cattle has been in place in North America since 1997 as opposed to being a wide spread practice in Europe when BSE was first identified.
Lastly our continent has much larger land mass that allows us to grow vegetable based proteins for animal feed like soybeans. That is not the case in Europe and Japan. Hopefully these last cases are still from the feed that was around before the ban was put in place. When the ban on ruminant products in cattle feed went into effect it only applied to newly manufactured cattle feed. The old stuff that was still around in feed bins was still usable according to law. This may be what has happened in these latest cases and is what the technical team from USDA will be looking at.
Yes, there's no scientific evidence that rules out that BSE in cattle cannot be a randomly occuring, genetic accident. You're right, scrapies is a form of TSE (transmittable spongiform encephalopathy) has existed for centuries as well as chronic wasting disease in deer and elk. The human form of CJD (not related to eating beef) naturally occurs in human populations at the rate of 1 - 2 cases per million people in the world. To date the vCJD (which is associated with cattle by-products) has been diagnosed in approximately 130 people worldwide. BSE, while it's not been ruled out to be a spontaenous random event, has been shown to spread through cattle herds by feeding of contaminated ruminant by-products.
really get it just eating the mad cow meat?
NOT by eating the meat. Not muscle meat. BSE has only been found in neural tissue like brain and spinal columns and also in portions of the small intestine and tonsils. There has never been a case of prions showing up in muscle tissue but there is a small potential that neural tissue could come into contact with muscle tissue in the slaughtering process. The beef packing industry has put several safeguards and slaughter technique changes in place to prevent this. The chance of this occuring is really extremely low.
How do the protein prions know to go from your stomach to your brain?
I don't have knowlege of this physiological aspect, but perhaps it's like how cancer cells migrate and latch on to different areas.
Let's put the risk factor in this perspective. The chances of getting BSE from beef you'd eat from a grocery store or a McDonalds is far less than the odds you could get run over and killed by the truck that delivered the beef to that establishment while you were walking from your car to the front door.
ping
Isn't there some concern for contamination of muscle meat from the processing equipment used on the animal carcasses? Also, while I understand that we have the capacity to grow plant proteins for animal feed, haven't there been reports of BSE infected deer herds in No. America? In other words, it's already present in wild animals, presumably because deer have eaten livestock feed?
As I stated in an earlier post the slaughter and packing industries have taken steps to remove SRM's (specified risk materials) early in the slaughter process. Procedures have been changed and the brain, spinal column tissue etc. are removed before the carcass ever gets near the processing equipment.
haven't there been reports of BSE infected deer herds in No. America?
Yes, it's called chronic wasting disease (CWD) which is another TSE variant and not BSE (bovine spongiform encephalopahty) and has been identified for many years.
In other words, it's already present in wild animals, presumably because deer have eaten livestock feed?
There has never been evidence of crossing species, i.e. deer to sheep or cattle. I have never read any research linking deer contracting CWD because they have eaten livestock feed.
More info at: http://www.usda.gov/wps/portal/usdahome
This is good to know. Seems only a year ago, I was reading that the animal's carcass is sawn in half -- through the spinal column and brain and, or course, all other parts as well, and this was a potential source of contamination.
BTTT!!!!!!
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