AP reports infected beef is found
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Since this is my profession you are dealing with here, I would appreciate your being more precise in your use of terms. Infected meat was not found. Meat from the animal which tested positive for MCD was traced to eight states and Guam. Hell, cook me a burgur from this beef and I'll consume it without any reservations!!!
Ken S. in WC TN
Ken S. in WC TN
Me too Ken ... And let all the "sheople' gallop off the cliff so they don't die of something that has killed fewer humans in centuries than our automobles do in one year...Crazy humans..! a friend used to tell me " a man born to be hung will never drown" GrannieDKen Scharabok said:
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WASHINGTON (Dec. 28) - Investigators disclosed Sunday that they have found meat cut from a Holstein sick with mad cow disease was sent to four more states and one territory.
AP
Cows are separated into different pens at the dairy farm Sunny Dene Ranch in Mabton, Wash. The farm has been quarantined after a cow from the farm was infected with mad cow disease.
Dr. Kenneth Petersen, an Agriculture Department veterinarian, said investigators have now determined that some of the meat from the cow slaughtered Dec. 9 went to Alaska, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana and Guam. Earlier, officials had said most of the meat went to Washington and Oregon, with lesser amounts to California and Nevada, for distribution to consumers.
He stressed, though, that the parts most likely to carry the infection - the brain, spinal cord and lower intestine - were removed before the meat from the infected cow was cut and processed for human consumption.
"The recalled meat represents essentially zero risk to consumers,'' Petersen said.
Although federal officials maintain the food supply is safe, they have recalled as a precaution an estimated 10,000 pounds of meat from the infected cow and from 19 other cows all slaughtered Dec. 9 at Vern's Moses Lake Meat Co., in Moses Lake, Was
Petersen, of the department's Food Safety and Inspection Service, said the department still is recovering meat and won't know if all of it has been returned until later this week.
Officials say the slaughtered cow was deboned at Midway Meats in Centralia, Wash., and sent Dec. 12 to two other plants, Willamette Valley Meat and Interstate Meat, both near Portland, Ore.
Petersen has said that much of the meat is being held by those facilities.
Petersen said Willamette also received beef trimmings - parts used in meats such as hamburger. He said those trimmings were sold to some three dozen small, Asian and Mexican facilities in Washington, Oregon, California and Nevada.
In response, representatives from supermarket chains in the West - Albertsons, Fred Meyer, Safeway and WinCo Foods have voluntarily removed ground beef products from the affected distributors. Safeway has said it will look for another supplier.
Mad cow disease, known as bovine spongiform encephalopathy, is a concern because humans who eat brain or spinal matter from an infected cow can develop variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. In Britain, 143 people died of it after an outbreak of mad cow in the 1980s.
More on This Story
· U.S. Loses Nearly 90 Percent of Beef Exports
· Timeline of U.S. Mad Cow Case
Despite assurances that meat is safe, Japan, the top importer of American beef, and more than two dozen countries have blocked U.S. beef imports. Jordan joined the list on Sunday. U.S. beef industry officials estimated this week that they've lost 90 percent of their export market. Ranchers export 10 percent of the beef they produce.
U.S. agriculture officials arrived Sunday in Japan to discuss maintaining beef trade even as the United States investigates how the Holstein in Washington state got mad cow disease.
Dr. Ron DeHaven, the department's chief veterinarian, said on Saturday that investigators have tentatively traced the first U.S. cow with mad cow disease to Canada. This could help determine the scope of the outbreak and might even limit the economic damage to the American beef industry.
The tentative conclusion traced the diseased cow to the province of Alberta, where Canada had found another case of mad cow infection last May.
However, DeHaven re-emphasized Sunday that investigators aren't certain of that because U.S. records outlining the animal's history do not match ones in Canada. Canadian officials had complained it was premature to reach any firm conclusion.
DeHaven said Sunday that DNA tests were being arranged to help resolve the matter.
Canadian papers show the cow had two calves before it was exported to the United States, contrary to U.S. documents which classified the animal as a heifer when it arrived, meaning it had never born calves.
Also, according to Canadian documents, the diseased cow was 6 1/2-years-old - older than U.S. officials had thought. U.S. records say the cow was 4- or 4 1/2-years-old.
Officials are concerned about the cow's age because it may have been born before the United States and Canada in 1997 banned certain feed that is considered the most likely source of infection.
A cow gets infected by eating feed containing tissue from the spine or brain of an infected animal. Farmers used to feed their animals such meal to fatten them.
The Food and Drug Administration is trying to find out if the cow ate contaminated feed - a difficult task because the animal may have gotten the disease from feed it ate years before it appeared sick. The disease has an incubation period of four or five years.
Dr. Stephen Sundlof, head of the FDA's Center for Veterinary Medicine, said that an animal could get sick if it eats a little bit of infected material, as little as half a gram.
"Even if a small amount amount of brain or central nervous system (material) were to get into cattle feed, there is the potential for even that very small dose to result in the disease,'' Sundlof said.
Sundlof said officials are less certain about how much would infect a human. "It's not known what dose would infect humans, but it would higher for humans than for cattle,'' he said.
Investigators have considered other ways the disease could spread. Although scientists have never found a case of mad cow infection being passed from a mother cow to its calf, they want to test the sick cow's calves for the disease as a precaution.
12/28/03 12:18 EST
AP
Cows are separated into different pens at the dairy farm Sunny Dene Ranch in Mabton, Wash. The farm has been quarantined after a cow from the farm was infected with mad cow disease.
Dr. Kenneth Petersen, an Agriculture Department veterinarian, said investigators have now determined that some of the meat from the cow slaughtered Dec. 9 went to Alaska, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana and Guam. Earlier, officials had said most of the meat went to Washington and Oregon, with lesser amounts to California and Nevada, for distribution to consumers.
He stressed, though, that the parts most likely to carry the infection - the brain, spinal cord and lower intestine - were removed before the meat from the infected cow was cut and processed for human consumption.
"The recalled meat represents essentially zero risk to consumers,'' Petersen said.
Although federal officials maintain the food supply is safe, they have recalled as a precaution an estimated 10,000 pounds of meat from the infected cow and from 19 other cows all slaughtered Dec. 9 at Vern's Moses Lake Meat Co., in Moses Lake, Was
Petersen, of the department's Food Safety and Inspection Service, said the department still is recovering meat and won't know if all of it has been returned until later this week.
Officials say the slaughtered cow was deboned at Midway Meats in Centralia, Wash., and sent Dec. 12 to two other plants, Willamette Valley Meat and Interstate Meat, both near Portland, Ore.
Petersen has said that much of the meat is being held by those facilities.
Petersen said Willamette also received beef trimmings - parts used in meats such as hamburger. He said those trimmings were sold to some three dozen small, Asian and Mexican facilities in Washington, Oregon, California and Nevada.
In response, representatives from supermarket chains in the West - Albertsons, Fred Meyer, Safeway and WinCo Foods have voluntarily removed ground beef products from the affected distributors. Safeway has said it will look for another supplier.
Mad cow disease, known as bovine spongiform encephalopathy, is a concern because humans who eat brain or spinal matter from an infected cow can develop variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. In Britain, 143 people died of it after an outbreak of mad cow in the 1980s.
· U.S. Loses Nearly 90 Percent of Beef Exports
· Timeline of U.S. Mad Cow Case
Despite assurances that meat is safe, Japan, the top importer of American beef, and more than two dozen countries have blocked U.S. beef imports. Jordan joined the list on Sunday. U.S. beef industry officials estimated this week that they've lost 90 percent of their export market. Ranchers export 10 percent of the beef they produce.
U.S. agriculture officials arrived Sunday in Japan to discuss maintaining beef trade even as the United States investigates how the Holstein in Washington state got mad cow disease.
Dr. Ron DeHaven, the department's chief veterinarian, said on Saturday that investigators have tentatively traced the first U.S. cow with mad cow disease to Canada. This could help determine the scope of the outbreak and might even limit the economic damage to the American beef industry.
The tentative conclusion traced the diseased cow to the province of Alberta, where Canada had found another case of mad cow infection last May.
However, DeHaven re-emphasized Sunday that investigators aren't certain of that because U.S. records outlining the animal's history do not match ones in Canada. Canadian officials had complained it was premature to reach any firm conclusion.
DeHaven said Sunday that DNA tests were being arranged to help resolve the matter.
Canadian papers show the cow had two calves before it was exported to the United States, contrary to U.S. documents which classified the animal as a heifer when it arrived, meaning it had never born calves.
Also, according to Canadian documents, the diseased cow was 6 1/2-years-old - older than U.S. officials had thought. U.S. records say the cow was 4- or 4 1/2-years-old.
Officials are concerned about the cow's age because it may have been born before the United States and Canada in 1997 banned certain feed that is considered the most likely source of infection.
A cow gets infected by eating feed containing tissue from the spine or brain of an infected animal. Farmers used to feed their animals such meal to fatten them.
The Food and Drug Administration is trying to find out if the cow ate contaminated feed - a difficult task because the animal may have gotten the disease from feed it ate years before it appeared sick. The disease has an incubation period of four or five years.
Dr. Stephen Sundlof, head of the FDA's Center for Veterinary Medicine, said that an animal could get sick if it eats a little bit of infected material, as little as half a gram.
"Even if a small amount amount of brain or central nervous system (material) were to get into cattle feed, there is the potential for even that very small dose to result in the disease,'' Sundlof said.
Sundlof said officials are less certain about how much would infect a human. "It's not known what dose would infect humans, but it would higher for humans than for cattle,'' he said.
Investigators have considered other ways the disease could spread. Although scientists have never found a case of mad cow infection being passed from a mother cow to its calf, they want to test the sick cow's calves for the disease as a precaution.
12/28/03 12:18 EST
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OK, originally the government said brain & spinal cord, now they've added lower intestines. How many more areas of the cow will show up as a potential vector??
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KY guest,
This site has enough info to answer your questions. You might not like what you read. http://organicconsumers.org/madcow.htm
This site has enough info to answer your questions. You might not like what you read. http://organicconsumers.org/madcow.htm
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2,828 Posts
David, thanks for the link. You're right, it's not very appetizing but I'd rather know what I'm dealing with than stick my head in the sand & hope it will all turn out OK.
This makes me even more thankful that I raise our own meats and I know exactly what goes into their feed. We don't use any feed for any of our livestock that contains animal proteins/byproducts. Not even the chickens or pigs get any products containing meat or animal proteins! Does it cost more & is it more difficult to find such feeds: yup but not enough to justify NOT feeding the best-after all it's my family I'm providing for and they're worth it. Anyone who buys one of my animals knows what they've been fed and I have the records/feed receipts to prove it.
This makes me even more thankful that I raise our own meats and I know exactly what goes into their feed. We don't use any feed for any of our livestock that contains animal proteins/byproducts. Not even the chickens or pigs get any products containing meat or animal proteins! Does it cost more & is it more difficult to find such feeds: yup but not enough to justify NOT feeding the best-after all it's my family I'm providing for and they're worth it. Anyone who buys one of my animals knows what they've been fed and I have the records/feed receipts to prove it.
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40 Posts
I'm all for getting information and becoming educated, but that organic site sure does seem to be putting its own spin on the situation. Seems they hand picked most of their article links with the aim blow the MCD thing out of proportion. I read everything from many sources and then make my personal determination. For now, I'm with Ken S. Cook me up a steak from that Washington Holstein (okay, a stew then) and I'll enjoy eating it.
I thought I was saving me some work, about dec 18 I went and bought three pounds of hamburger and made two batchs of cowboy casserole one of which we ate and the other in the fridge for after chistmass. Now the casserole just sits there[ in california] cause I am afraid to eat it, now we call it mad cow casserole!
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