Japan confirms Mad Cow death

KING5

[djf]

Japan has confirmed the death of a man from mad cow disease. No announcements yet about if they know anything about the animal, etc. They are holding an emergency meeting of their national health board now.

[Peace will be here soon]

I wonder if the U.S. will ban Kobe beef entering the country?

[BCrago66]

Actually I think Japan just recently allowed our beef back into their country, after banning it when one of our cows was discovered to have Mad Cow disease. Given that, according to the Vanity (no link) a man - not a cow - got the disease, it's possible that he got it from eating American beef.

[texasflower]

Does mad cow disease kill so fast? I thought it was something that destroyed the brain with time.

I think it takes around 7 months to a year to develop.

In that case, I don't think it could be American beef. Ours hasn't been allowed back very long and it was quite a long time ago that ours was banned.

[jennyp]

Here's the AP article:

Japan Confirms Human Mad Cow Disease Case

By MARI YAMAGUCHI

Associated Press Writer

TOKYO (AP) -- Japan confirmed its first human case of mad cow disease Friday following the death of a man who had symptoms of the fatal brain wasting illness.

Health Ministry held an emergency meeting to determine whether the man had contracted the disease by eating infected beef.

Masahito Yamada, a ministry official, said the man had lived for one month in Britain - where mad cow first surfaced - in 1989, but did not develop the disease until late 2001. He died last December.

"We believe it is highly likely that he contracted the disease during his visit to Britain," Yamada told reporters. "We cannot rule out the possibility that he ate the infected parts at that time."

Ministry officials said they consulted with British experts last year and initially ruled out mad cow disease but continued to follow the man's condition.

Surveillance committee member Yoshikazu Nakamura said it is possible the man contracted the disease from eating beef in Japan and that ministry experts will continue to investigate.

The human variant of Creutzfeldt-Jacob Disease has only been confirmed or deemed probable in 167 other people worldwide, virtually all of them in Britain but also in France, the United States, Ireland, Italy and Canada - though hundreds of thousands of people have likely eaten contaminated beef products.

Mad cow has spread through Europe and Asia since it was found in Britain. A fatal human form of the disease is believed to come from eating beef products from infected cows, especially tissue close to the animal's nervous system.

Since it was first discovered in Japan in 2001, 15 animals have been found with the disease - known formally as bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or BSE - but there have been no human cases.

Tokyo has checked every slaughtered cow before it entered the food supply since finding the first infected animal. The latest suspected case was found in October.

Friday's confirmation of the human mad cow case could hamper efforts by the United States to persuade Japan to ease its ongoing ban on U.S. beef imports.

Japan banned American beef imports in December 2003 after the discovery of the first U.S. case of mad cow disease in Washington state. At the time, Japan was the most lucrative overseas market for American beef, with sales exceeding $1.7 billion in 2003.

The two sides tentatively agreed late last year to resume imports of beef products from cows younger than 21 months old but later stalled over differences about how to authenticate the age of cattle.

[Axlrose]

Thats the thing, AFAIK, its takes so long to develop he may have been infected many years ago before the ban (that was in 2002 wasn't it ?)

I don't think we'll every know for sure how he got it.

[texasflower]

Yes, 2002 sounds about right for the ban on our beef.

I think some lady that died in the UK actually contracted the disease several years before, so I guess maybe it could be ours.

I have no idea of how meat is distributed, whether the meat from one cow would go to the exact same place or if it would have been distributed more. Come to think of it, I don't even want to know those details...

But you would think more people would have gotten sick.

BTW, what is AFAIK?

[Axlrose]

As Far As I Know :)

[djf]

It takes quite a while. Technically, the term is "BSE" for bovine spongiform encephalitis.

You get holes in your brain, it eats away at it, rather it causes what is there to decay and disintegrate.

It seems common for us to think this is recent, but there is alot of evidence that Alzheimers and some other diseases are related to a problem with malformed proteins.

[ONETWOONE]

I'm here in Japan and newspapers say that this individual traveled to England sometime in 1990. The paper also states that so far 150 people in England have died from Mad Cow disease. It's not the Japanese beef.

[daylate-dollarshort]

In cows, the latency (incubation) period for mad cow disease is about 5 years, meaning that cows have the disease for five years before symptoms begin to appear. No one knows precisely what the latency period for mad cow is in humans, but it is thought to be ~10 years.

That said, the chance of this case originating from the consumption of US beef is infinitesimal. Moreover, there have been some 200 cases of mad cow disease diagnosed in humans worldwide. At that rate the chances that I will contract mad cow is somewhere around 3.33333333333333333333333333333333^-8 %.

At that rate I'll have the T-bone please, and make that rare.

[KeyWest]

3.3 x 10-8 %.

[KeyWest]

or
.000000033

[katana]

Kobe Beef imports: 99 percent of us can't afford it anyway. Real Kobe Beef costs somewhere around $ 100 per pound!

I would think it likely that the man contracted the illness while traveling overseas, say in the UK or Canada. If not, that is if it is someone who's never been outside Japan, then the scale of the potential problem becomes much greater.

The source could still be imported beef from an affected country as it seems unlikely Japanese beef growers would use the types of feed that have been banned elsewhere. But however it was picked up, that is a very nasty way to go.

[Actually_in_Tokyo]

Asahi is saying that the man, who was in his 40s, spent a month in the UK in 1989. He died in December 2004.

[Pure Country]

If the beef is cooked well done, does that kill whatever causes Mad Cow?

[Winniesboy]

No. The prions (the infective agent) are extraordinarily tough, and survive not only high temperatures but even the normal sterilisation techniques for surgical instruments - which is why some surgical procedures (at least in the UK) are now done with single-use instruments.

[Actually_in_Tokyo]

Thanks for that response.

[kittymyrib]

It takes years to incubate in the human brain before symptoms are manifest. The Japanese will have a hard time finding the source unless the man documented the source of every morsel of meat he ever swallowed.

[Pure Country]

I have often wondered if it was just raw meat that would get you in trouble. Glad to know different. Thanks