Mad Cow Disease

[Guest guest]

Here are some articles on the question of " Mad Cow Disease "

(Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease) in the USA.

<http://www.purefood.org/madcow.htm>

The U.S. May Face Mad-Cow Exposure Despite Assurances From Government

The Wall Street Journal

November 28, 2001

Steve Stecklow

Like a mantra, federal officials and beef-industry executives are fond of

repeating that there never has been a case of mad-cow disease in the United

States. It's the same claim that Germany, Italy, Spain and Japan used to

make -- until the disease showed up in their cattle, instantly resulting in

plunging beef sales.

Will the U.S. go down the same road?

On Friday, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and Harvard University plan to

release a government-funded study that is expected to show that the U.S. has

little chance of facing the kind of mad-cow epidemic that befell Britain,

where the disease was first diagnosed in cattle 15 years ago.

But a close examination of America's mad-cow safety net shows some possible

flaws. New data provided Tuesday by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration

reveal that scores of shipments of animal byproducts for use in animal feed

came into the U.S. in recent years from countries that now have mad-cow

disease in their cattle herds, a potentially serious source of contamination.

In addition, federal inspections have shown that many U.S. animal-feed mills

continue to violate regulations designed to prevent the spread of the

disease. And critics say the U.S. isn't spending enough time or money

inspecting cattle -- or people -- for signs of the sickness....

Mad-cow disease is worrisome because it can jump from cows to humans, and the

incurable ailment, which perforates the brain with microscopic holes, is

always fatal. During the past five years, more than 100 people, nearly all in

Britain, have died from variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, and at least 27

new cases have been diagnosed in the first 10 months of this year. Meanwhile,

bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), which strikes cows, has been reported

in domestic herds in 18 countries to date. Several other countries have found

diseased animals that had been imported from Britain.

Though the origins of BSE remain unclear, scientists are convinced that it

spreads among cattle through infected feed containing meat-and-bone meal, a

protein supplement made from the ground-up parts of cows. If the animal being

processed is infected, then the meal can transmit the disease to many other

animals. It takes only one gram of contaminated material to infect a cow....

It's also unclear how much animal protein, including possibly meat-and-bone

meal, has been imported into the U.S. in recent years from non-European

countries which haven't yet detected mad-cow disease but could in the future.

Other than Japan, " if an Asian country wants to export meat-and-bone meal

into the U.S. there would not be any restrictions, " says F. Sundlof,

director of the FDA's Center for Veterinary Medicine. He notes, however, that

once inside the U.S., the material would be subject to the cattle-feed ban.

'Chicken Litter' Risk

Another potential problem, say FDA officials, is " chicken litter, " the

mixture of excrement, excess feed and feathers that ends up on the floor of

chicken houses. Although the beef and feed industry doesn't like to publicize

it, the material remains permissible as an ingredient in cattle feed,

although the practice of using it isn't believed to be widespread. " It's

mostly an on-the-farm practice, " says Sellers, vice president for

feed control and nutrition at the American Feed Industry Association. Since

chicken feed can contain bovine meat-and-bone meal, the litter represents a

potential source of contamination, the FDA believes. " In litter, there is

feed that's spilled and gets mixed in, " says the FDA's Dr. Sundlof. He says

the agency is considering banning its use in cattle feed.

The FDA also is considering banning the use of so-called " plate waste " in

cattle feed, Dr. Sundlof says. The 1997 mammalian-protein ban exempted

left-over restaurant food, which can be processed and fed to cows, although

it's mostly fed to pigs. Hotel-casinos and theme parks in places such as

Atlantic City, N.J., and Orlando have been the main providers. But the FDA

believes such waste could contain bits of cow brain or other potentially

infected cow parts that, unlike in Europe, are still allowed to be consumed

in the U.S....

Disappointing Inspections

Officials say they've since caught up, but the results so far are

disappointing: Inspections of 2,653 feed mills that handle meat-and-bone meal

found that more than a fifth weren't taking adequate precautions to ensure

the material wasn't ending up in cattle feed. And even after many

reinspections, as of late last month about 13% of the mills remained out of

compliance.

A review of more than 50 warning letters the FDA sent to feed mills this year

shows the type of problems encountered. During a March visit to Farmers Mill

& Elevator Co. in Dexter, Ga., which makes cattle and hog feed, an inspector

found meat-and-bone meal that was being stored on pallets of cattle feed. He

also discovered that corn used to flush out mixing equipment prior to making

cattle feed was being bagged for use in hog feed, but without any required

warning labels not to use it in cattle feed.

" Of particular concern is that these same violations were pointed out during

the previous inspection of this facility on Oct. 21, 1998, " states the

warning letter, dated March 30, 2001....

Unlike in Europe, the USDA's surveillance program doesn't test apparently

healthy animals. The agency says 88% of U.S. cattle are slaughtered at less

than 20 months of age, and no BSE has ever been detected in an animal that

young. " We want to target where we're most likely to find it, as opposed to

shotgunning, " says Detwiler, who oversees the USDA's mad-cow

surveillance efforts.

The USDA says it's focusing on cows that can't walk, known as downer cows.

While a variety of ailments, ranging from muscle tears to neurological

disorders, can prevent a cow from standing, it's also a documented symptom of

mad-cow disease. The agency estimates there are about 130,000 downer animals

in the U.S. each year. This year it has tested more than 4,400, up from 344

in 1998.

But a quirky consequence of the mad-cow scare is that cattle raisers now have

a financial incentive to kill and bury downers rather than send them to

slaughterhouses, where USDA inspectors are deployed to test for BSE and other

health hazards. The market for downers has been drying up. Fast-food chains

such as Mc's Corp. and Burger King Corp. have told slaughterhouses they

no longer will accept meat from such animals as a safety precaution. (Mad-cow

disease isn't the only concern. Downers tend to carry salmonella and other

pathogens from lying in manure.)....

The flip side of mad-cow surveillance in the U.S. is the effort to detect the

disease in humans. Unlike the repeated claims that the country is at little

risk of BSE, government officials say cases of variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob

disease, the human version of the illness, appear almost inevitable. That's

because millions of Americans lived or travelled to Britain during the 1980s

and early 1990s, when BSE was rampant, and may have been exposed by consuming

infected meat. Hong Kong, for example, recently reported a vCJD case of a

woman who had spent years living in Britain.

" I would not be surprised if there is a vCJD case in the U.S., " says the

FDA's Dr. Sundlof. Adds Lawrence Schonberger, an epidemiologist at the

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, " There may well be

some people in the United States who are incubating the disease. " (The

disease's incubation period remains unknown, but it is believed to take

years, even decades, before symptoms emerge.)

But one of the scientists involved in looking for human cases says the

surveillance effort to date is inadequate and that the U.S. " is way behind "

other countries, including Canada. " There's no question in my mind that this

country must have good surveillance because if we miss these cases, then we

are in trouble, " warns Pierluigi Gambetti, director of the National Prion

Disease Pathology Surveillance Center at Case Western Reserve University in

Cleveland. Mad-cow is one of several related brain disorders believed to be

caused by an aberrant protein known as a prion.

Dr. Gambetti says he's concerned because vCJD potentially is much more

infectious than classical CJD, a prion disease already present in the U.S.

Classical CJD occurs spontaneously in about one in every million people and

can be transmitted through surgical instruments used in brain operations.

Although there's no known case of a human passing vCJD to another human,

scientists are worried it may be transmissible through blood or other means.

That fear has prompted restrictions in the U.S. on blood donors who have

spent time in Britain and the rest of Europe.

Dr. Gambetti says there are about 300 reported cases of prion diseases in the

U.S. each year, but that his lab currently is analyzing only about a third of

them to see if they might be mad-cow disease. " The British and Germans

politely smile when they see we examine 30% or 40% of the cases, " he says.

" They know unless you examine 80% or more, you are not in touch. " ...

---------------

<http://www.OrganicConsumers.org/madcow/brain112701.cfm>

Collateral Damage: Brain tissue in Bovine Lung

Transfusion, Vol. 41, No. 11, 1325, November 2001 by Lois Roth

(lroth@...)

For veterinary pathology instruction, sections of various tissues were taken

from a healthy cow killed at a United States slaughterhouse. The slaughter

method involves a pneumatically activated penetrating captive bolt; during

firing, the bolt, which remains attached to the barrel of the gun, protrudes

about 4 inches and injects compressed air into the cranial vault. In addition

to the mechanical trauma caused by the bolt, injection of air into the brain

causes acute, severe fragmentation of brain tissue, with the purpose of

ensuring rapid death. This method of killing has been used in the United

Kingdom since 1980 and in the United States since 1982. In the

photomicrograph presented here (Specimen provided by M. King, DVM, PhD,

Diplomate ACVP, Department of Biomedical Sciences, New York State College of

Veterinary Medicine, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY), bovine lung tissue is

visible in the lower right corner; a large plug of brain tissue sits in a

branch of the pulmonary artery. Fragments of neural tissue up to 3 cm in

dimension were also found in the vessels of the liver, kidney, and right

ventricle of the heart; muscle tissue was not available. Bovine spongiform

encephalopathy and new variant CJD have not been diagnosed in the United

States, but the presence of central nervous system tissue in the vessels of

visceral organs after slaughter is a cause for concern, as it may contribute

to transmission of these diseases.

By law, bovine products may not be fed to cattle, but they may be fed to

other farm animals, providing a route of entry into the food chain. Although

most organ meats are used to produce pet food, sweetbreads are also delicacy

items used for human consumption. Furthermore, the wide dissemination of

brain tissue by this slaughter process is likely also to involve muscle meat.

---------------------

FDA Warnings show that US feed makers continue to violate the1997 mad cow

feed ban.

<http://www.OrganicConsumers.org/madcow/warning11801.cfm>

<http://www.OrganicConsumers.org/madcow/warning102401.cfm>

Our investigation found a failure to provide adequate measures to avoid

commingling or cross-contamination of non-prohibited materials. For example,

the common scoop used to transfer prohibited material from 50-pound bags to

smaller brown bags is not cleaned between prohibited and non-prohibited

material uses. ALSO, open bags of prohibited materials were reported to be

stored next to other open feed ingredient bags.

-------------------

There are numerous articles on the presence of brain wasting disease among

farmed and wild elk and deer, with recreational hunters blithely continuing

to hunt such animals, even though the extent of the disease is largely

unknown at present (because the disease cannot be detected in living

animals). For example:

<http://www.OrganicConsumers.org/madcow/outbreak101401.cfm>

CWD outbreak is nation's worst Colo. scrambles to stop brain-malady's spread

The Denver Post

October 14, 2001

by Theo Stein

Years after state wildlife biologists warned that lax regulation could allow

chronic wasting disease to spread through ranched elk herds, Colorado has

been caught dead center in the largest outbreak of the disease in the United

States.

While agriculture officials last week began marking 148 elk in ranches all

over the state for slaughter and testing, wildlife officers shot 30 wild deer

that may have mingled with CWD-exposed elk inside a private shooting park in

Cowdrey to try and prevent them from carrying the infection to previously

unexposed wild herds.

And with the number of Colorado ranched elk destined for testing now more

than 1500, the outbreak is starting to look like one in Saskatchewan, where

provincial officials reacted to a long-smoldering epidemic by ordering 6300

elk slaughtered during the past 18 months. It was an enormous blow to the elk

industry, but it came too late to prevent the spread of the fatal brain

wasting disease to two wild mule deer living near the infected game farms.

'What happened in Saskatchewan is what we're trying to avoid,' said state

veterinarian Dr. Wayne Cunningham. ...

says the agency may indeed have given some wild deer from the Fort

research station to places like the Denver Zoo. But it was before the

malady was recognized as a transmissible brain wasting disease. He and other

researchers are certain CWD was present in the wild before its appearance at

the research station...

---------------

Here is further news on the same topic by State authorities:

<http://www.OrganicConsumers.org/madcow/worries111201.cfm>

Deer, Elk disease worries state veterinarian

November 12, 2001 Associated Press by Joe Kafka

Few states have regulations to prevent the spread of chronic wasting disease

in elk and deer, endangering both wild and domestic herds, South Dakota's

state veterinarian says.

A recent outbreak of the fatal animal disease in Colorado points to the need

for a nationwide regulatory program, said Dr. Sam Holland, who also is

executive secretary of the state Animal Industry Board. Colorado elk exposed

to the disease were shipped to 15 states, including South Dakota, he said.

Holland said six elk that had to be destroyed in South Dakota were found free

of the disease. The brains were examined to determine if they were infected;

the disease cannot be diagnosed in live animals.

Animals with chronic wasting disease gradually lose weight, become unsteady

and die.

Chronic wasting disease is endemic to wild deer and elk in parts of Wyoming,

Colorado and Nebraska. South Dakota was the first state to confirm the

existence of the disease in farm-raised elk, Holland said. After the disease

was found in November 1997, the Animal Industry Board approved rules to

prevent it from spreading among elk raised in captivity.

In 1998, South Dakota legislators approved a measure allowing restrictions on

imports of elk, deer, caribou, moose and reindeer into the state and limiting

the movement of those animals from one captive herd to another within the

state.......

---------------

There are other websites and journal articles which suggest that doctors in

the USA who have minimal experience of brain wasting diseases transmitted

from animals may commonly misdiagnose " Mad Cow " disease as " Alzheimer's

disease " , but that may be a topic for later letters.

----------------

Dr Mel C Siff

Denver, USA

Supertraining/