'Mad cow' disease found in goat

BBC ^ | Friday, 28 January, 2005

[nickcarraway]

A French goat has tested positive for mad cow disease - the first animal in the world other than a cow to have bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE). The European Commission says further testing will be done to see if the incidence is an isolated one.

The animal, which was slaughtered in 2002, was initially thought to have scrapie, a similar brain-wasting condition sometimes seen in goats.

But British scientists have now confirmed the disease was in fact BSE.

More than 100 people in the UK have died from vCJD (variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease), the human form of BSE, after eating tainted beef.

But the EC stressed on Friday that precautionary measures put in place in recent years to protect the human food chain from contaminated meats meant there was no need for alarm over the latest finding.

Markos Kyprianou, EU Commissioner responsible for Health and Consumer Protection, said: "I want to reassure consumers that existing safety measures in the EU offer a very high level of protection.

"This case was discovered thanks to the EU testing system in place in France.

"The testing programme has shown us that there is a very low incidence rate of TSEs (transmissible spongiform encephalopathies) in goats and allowed us to detect suspect animals so that they can be taken out of the food chain, as was done with this goat and its entire herd."

UK expert opinion

BSE had not previously been found under natural circumstances in ruminants other than cattle - although its presence in goats or other ruminants had been viewed as theoretically possible.

Although some incidences of TSEs in animals such as cats and antelopes have looked very similar to the BSE strain, there is some debate over whether these really were mad cow.

In 2001, a study in the UK was thought to have found BSE in sheep. It later transpired, however, that the scientists working on the research study were mistakenly looking at samples obtained from cow brains.

The EC now wants to test 200,000 goats in the 25 EU member states over the next six months.

The testing would concentrate on countries where cases of BSE have been reported in cattle in the past, including the UK.

Current testing has already shown there is a low incidence of scrapie in goats. In the UK, for example, only two cases have been confirmed since 1997. In France, which has a far bigger goat population, just 19 positives were recorded among 21,000 animals tested in 2003.

Across the EU bloc as a whole, there are believed to be more than 11.5 million goats.

The European Commission's Standing Committee on Food Chain and Animal Health will meet to discuss the case of the French goat and its implications next week.

The French agriculture ministry said the goat came from the Ardeche region, in southeast France. It was kept in a flock of 300 animals which were all slaughtered and their carcasses destroyed.

When French research was unable to distinguish the TSE found in the goat from the BSE strain, samples were sent to the Community Reference Laboratory (CRL) for TSEs in Weybridge, UK, for its expert opinion. It confirmed the presence of the BSE strain.

[ex-Texan]

I hate to say this (wink! ;) . . . But this is Baaa Baaa Bad!

Just kidding . . . Oops!

[Red Badger]

OSAMA MUST BE HORRIFIED!......

[theDentist]

I hear that Koffi Anan discovered it during an intimate act and because something felt "different".

[montag813]

I trade forex and the Euro dropped like a rock when this news hit

[DustyMoment]

So many responses - so little bandwidth!!!

[Tuba Guy]

Yikes !!

[Nataku X]

the first animal in the world other than a cow to have bovine spongiform encephalopathy

Don't humans get that too, which is the whole reason why we fear eating cows with Mad Cow Disease? That'd count as another species.

[lilylangtree]

French goat! Hmn!

[dhuffman@awod.com]

More seriously; I doubt anyone with any inkling about BSE/prions is surprised. Kind'a like HTLVIII, I wonder what the end of this hyperbola will look like.

[America's Resolve]

I'm waiting for the first reports of FSE ... Frog spongiform encephalopathy.

[vetvetdoug]

When BSE first broke out in the cattle in Britain, the Brit Agriculture Committee allowed the cattle to be rendered and sold as ANIMAL FOOD to European Countries. Blood meal, pig feed, dog and cat food, chicken food, were just a few of the areas where the BSE positive animals were sent. The prion crossed into these animals and never showed symptoms because many were killed before the disease manifested itself. Unfortunately, even though the animals did not exhibit BSE, they could transmit the prions. The Germans, French, Dutch and Italians ain't seen nothing yet because there is with BSE a long lag time between infection and symptoms. I won't ever eat another Dutch ham.

[King Prout]

my related question: irrespective of the name we give the syndrome in an afflicted animal, is the root cause the same?

ie: is it the same prion molecule causing all the ailments?

[Nataku X]

Did a little Googling and how it's actually transmitted isn't really that clear--apparently the current theory is that the mutant prions can bind to receptors, but it's not clear if an exact copy is generated or if a similarly defunct but uniquely human copy is created. What I'd really like to know is if you can get these diseases from eating steak, not just brain tissue.

[vetvetdoug]

Even steak has neural tissue in it. The researchers are having to admit that BSE can be transmitted from any part of the animal. BSE, Scrapie, C-J Disease, Kuru......they jump from one species to another and I would not be surprised if Chronic Wasting Disease could not be a cause of C-J in a human. The more researchers characterize the prion, the better we can nail down who and who cannot get the spongiform encephalopathies. There is still a lot to be found out. IMHO we don't know squat, yet.

[Nataku X]

The researchers are having to admit that BSE can be transmitted from any part of the animal.

You just turned me into a vegetarian.

[Coleus]

Via Drudge?????????????????

See what happens when one resorts to cannibalism, your animals come down with very serious diseases. The etiology of this Mad Cow Disease all started by farmers feeding cows (ruminants, herbivores) their very own body parts or parts from other animals in the form of feed and bone meal supplements for calcium.

http://nov55.com/spr.html

To date, the only cow in the United States that has been found to be infected with the disease was the one diagnosed in December 2003, according to the FDA's Web site.

"You have animal residues and (the cattleman) cook it and turn it into pet food," Wei said.

Wei's research now focuses on being able to determine the differences between dead cows and dead chickens in animal feed.

"The main cause of mad cow disease transmission is meat and bone meal," Kim said. "We are trying to develop a system where we can develop meat and bone meal in animal feed."

http://www.mycattle.com/health/dsp_health_article.cfm?storyid=13147

http://www.cuim.edu/Class%20Materials/ Block,%20Jerry/trilogy%20of%20info.pdf

Humans are now doing the same where in states like NJ, human cloning is now legal. What damage will they cause when harvesting babies for body parts.