MAD COW origon

"Could it be that they don't have a clue or do they think the average cattle producer is dumb."

Probably a combination thereof. I get the gut feeling the scientists and researchers don't really know where MCD comes from. Leading theory is Scrapie in sheep and MCD in cattle involve prions, which are sort of indestructable rogue viruses. However, sheep carcasses infected with Scrapie have been part of cattle feed as meat and bone meal (M&BM) for a long time. Why the sudden outbreak? Besides the two have totally different symptons. Scrapie causes an intense itching and the sheep do poorly simply because it is so distracting (imagine having Shingles all over your body). In cattle it causes a rabie-like symptoms with agressiveness and lack of coordination. If Chronic Wasting Disease in deer and elk is thrown into the mix, it also has different symptoms, as its name implies. In humans, the symptoms of vCJD are totally different still.

They are trying to deal with something they really don't understand.

Ken S. in WC TN

Probably doesn't matter where the beef was delivered or even if it were consumed. Changes of getting vCJD from it are incredibly small. You're more in danger of contaminating the meat from an unsanitary countertop in your kitchen.

In England likely a substantial portion of the population ate beef from cattle which very likely had MCD at the time of slaughter. Say a population of 55M and half were exposed. From that some 143 came down with vCJD.

It may be these 143 were going to develop CJD in the future anywhere, as it occurs naturally on the order of about 1/1M. Exposure of the prions merely accelerated the process. Perhaps there was an outside trigger which caused the clusters of both MCD and vCJD totally independent of each other.

Cattle in the U.S. were fed B&BM from sheep carcasses for many years, some of which no doubt had Scrapie, yet not a single case of vCJD has been confirmed as originating in the U.S. Same for Canada from my understanding.

Even if there were full-blown MCD caused vCJD in the U.S. of 1,000 a year, it would still be only about 3% of those who die annually from the flu.

I'm not saying who cares, but rather let's keep this in perspective.

Ken S. in WC TN

It seems that the U S D A is in the ignore mode.They have laid all the blame at Canada,s feet and closed the door!! If they leave an information void we will havev it filled by people like LITTLE MOM in the homesteading forum If they do NOT come forward and be proactive about this problem they will let all of the WRONG people have the stage. Posts about mad cow from childhood shots is just the tip of the iceburg. If I have to glean information from more "obscure" sources; what will I think when the word comes out that it was NOT ALL Canada's problem I will pressume the whole beef industry was covering up therw SECRETE PROBLEM!! You can bet your last dollar that the pictures that run with the story will be of the PRODUCER not the ahole that just figured it would just go away if the USDA could just whistle in the dark long enough If you want a wakeup call se how long it takes to go over all the info the USDA has passed along to your vet.My bet is you will talk about the cold weather. If this is what I pay my taxes for I am very sad Well I am off to the sale today to see what the rest of the 'mushroom' people have to say

Mr. Wanda

Mike

I think the majority of visitors here know the quality of Little Mom's hysterical posts fall somewhat short of reality. Borderline SPAM in my opinion. I'm not so sure it really matters if the cow came from Canada, it might help in many ways. We've tightened our slaughtering regs already so it shouldn't hurt us as much as all that but just because this one cow from Canada (presumably) tested positive hardly means you've contained the problem! 70,000 cows came into your country last year from Canada (how many from Mexico?) If you think Canada is a hotbed of terrible diseases its not, and you import meat and stock from all over the world. That fact alone should wake Americans (and Canadians) up to the reality that our small problems are the tip of a very big iceberg just waiting to cross our path. BSE is just one of many importable industry damaging diseases. We need to tighten import rules and testing not only betwen our two countries but with ALL countries. Borders do serve a purpose.

I don't think the USDA is in ignore mode. Federal agencies are tracking down every part of that cow no matter where it went. As for followimg the trail back to a common point of contamination, that may be impossible. What can be done is to track down and slaughter every cow and their progeny that were ever in herds or on farm and ranches that held the cows and test them all.

Sometime in the 60's, captive mule deer and elk were used in a study near Fort Collins, Colorado and Wheatland, Wyoming. They started dying from something that wasn't identified until 1977 when a researcher noticed that the slides of brain tissue taken from the deer resembled those from sheep with scrapie. Some of the original animals were released back into the wild. Other animals later kept in the same corral developed the same disease.

CWD is called by some experts an epidemic in slow motion. In 1996 CWD showed up on an elk farm in Saskatchewan. It seems to be slowly spreading via the mule deer, elk and whitetail populations. As mentioned in another post, it's already crossed the Mississippi River. While the USDA is conjecturing about feed, I think they should start looking at cross species contamination. The Canadian MCD may have originated in the US in another species.

I don't think that either government is in ignore mode at all but I do think we're taking a lot of shots in the dark. Yes, the cow was born in Canada, that's documented and without refute but they will have to reseach past the location of her birth. The herd of origin is not always the only location that an animal can become sick. That is not a shot or in any way an attempt to push this issue back across the border. This cow and the angus cow, both come from a time when different feed practices were legal. It has always been implied that the kind folks from Saskatchewan that raise the little angus cow had somehow unknowingly fed that little girl some bad feed. The only problem with that theory is that the elderly folks have never bought any commercial feed, except for the protien blocks (I believe that the brand name they used was Nutrilix), the continually grew their own hay and fed their own barley to their cattle. The feed mill that is "under investigation" was investigated once before, last May and found to have done nothing illegal or anything that could be attributed to that case. Now, it's been suggested that they were purchasing bone meal from EU. I doubt very much if they were because they are part of a large corporation that owns a rendering facility. Both our countries sat and watched the whole thing play out in the UK and and waited for their studies. I think we would have been far better off if we would have actively assisted in research because it's here and we still have very little information about it.

Darren, your testing theory is great, we did it in Canada, killed off close to 3,000 head that were in any way associated with the affected cow, herdmates, sires, dams, calves, and anything else we could kill and test and everthing came up negative. I have shared your theory on jumping specied but was told that there is an onging program that tests this theory with no cross contamination but I wonder how they're dealing with their deads. I don't think that it comes from sharing pasture space but more from the fluids that seep from a carcass as it decomposes naturally, but again, that's just my personal theory.