[wr]

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.

 

[wr]

Darren, you're preaching to the choir. Perhaps I didn't make myself clear at all. On several occasions, I have suggested that this is less a matter of feed contamination than cross contamination. As a matter of fact, I had a discussion with my vet when we found the angus cow and he was the guy that mentioned to me that there was a possability of such an occurance and he drug out books and reference material to support his theory. In a recent thread I mentioned my theory and I was told that Colorado has an ongoing experiment that is proving my theory incorrect on a daily basis because they've been pastureing cattle and affected deer together for ages with no indication of cross contaminaton. The only thing I do know in all this madness is that if there's one, there's more and I'd sleep a lot better if they could find some pattern in all this. Right now, people are running scared again. They're talking again, about killing off all cattle that predate the new feed regulations. Won't that be great, rush headlong into a mass execution and find out that the feed regulations had nothing to do with it at all. I'm in Alberta and the only common thread that I find between the two cows is that they both come from an area that was heavily populated with deer and elk farms. The land from those farms are now under quasi quarrantines, never again can they have deer or elk on them, after the herds were decimated, but it's legal to raise cattle on that very same land. It's also illegal to release domesticated deer or elk into the wild, but I've seen pleny of both integrated into wild herds, they aren't hard to spot with their pretty little ear tag. The marekt for deer and elk is so poor here that they can't even be given away, the food banks won't take them because they aren't inspected and it's hard to convince someone to keep feeding something that's doing nothing but costing them money. Hopefully, both our governments are working together in a forward direction because our ag economy can't take much more pressure. Our latest auction report says that you can buy 600 wt steers, and darned good ones at that, for less than $200.

 

[wr]

Wanda, this is a tough time for everybody. The two governments and conducting and investigation and until there is some accurate information, they will say very little. It leaves folks worrying and wondering and the media is happy to fill in the gaps. During our investigation, the farms lost animals to testing and farms that were under investigation were to remain unnamed and each step along the way, the media ferreted out the names of ranch owners/operators, destroying the reputations of many good people. The poor man that last owned the angus cow is still in hiding and rumor the rumor mill has been pretty unkind to him. Your prices won't be as negatively affected as ours are because you have a greater population, we are dependant on an export market that's dried up. It's a rotten thing to happen to an industry and it's going to cause problems along the way.