Only 20,526 of 35,000,000 cattle checked for mad cow disease each year

[MORTARDUDE]

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/24/science/24INSP.html

Inspections for Mad Cow Lag Those Done Abroad
By MARIAN BURROS and DONALD G. McNEIL Jr.

Published: December 24, 2003


In discussing the case of mad cow disease apparently found in Washington State, Secretary of Agriculture Ann M. Veneman said yesterday that her department tested 20,526 cattle for mad cow disease last year. But that is only a small percentage of the 35 million commercially slaughtered each year.


Because no domestic cases of mad cow disease have been found before, the United States has never put in place the kind of stringent testing done in Japan and some European countries, where every animal is supposed to be tested before humans can eat it.

Inspectors are supposed to view cattle outside slaughterhouses and weed out any having trouble walking. Those with signs of brain disease are to be ruled unfit for human consumption and sent to a rendering plant.

That appears to have happened with the Washington cow. Yesterday, Elsa Murano, under secretary of agriculture for food safety, said its brain and spinal column had been sent to such a plant, to be turned into protein feed, oils and other products. It is the brain and spinal cord that are the most likely to be infected with prions, the misfolded proteins that can lead to a mad-cow-like disease in humans.

This does not guarantee that infected matter will never make its way into the human food supply, critics noted yesterday.

Under Food and Drug Administration regulations issued in 1997, it is illegal to feed protein made from cows, sheep, deer and other so-called ruminants to other ruminants. But it is still legal to feed the rendered protein to pigs, chickens and other animals. Those animals in turn can be rendered and fed to cows or sheep. Also, beef blood and beef fat can be fed to calves.

"You can go into any feed store and buy Calf Starter or calf milk substitute," said John Stauber, co-author of "Mad Cow U.S.A.," a 1997 book that warned that the disease could reach this country. "We're weaning calves on cattle blood proteins, even though we know blood plasma can carry the disease."

Also, said Sheldon Rampton, Mr. Stauber's co-author, questions have been raised about how effective the F.D.A. bans on feeding across species are.

If an animal becomes infected, the incubation period of the disease is three to eight years, so the detection of one animal with the disease suggests that others may have been infected by the same source but have not yet been found.

Mr. Stauber said an F.D.A. memorandum in 1997 predicted that if a single case of encephalopathy was found in the United States and a total ban on all feeding of animal protein to animals was immediately enacted, it was still possible that as many as 299,000 infected cows would be found over the next 11 years.

In the past, the hooves and horns were used for gelatins and bone and blood meal as fertilizer and the fat became soap. But with the invention of chemical soaps and fertilizers in the 1960's, other uses had to be found for the waste, and the animal protein market developed as a cheap way to bulk up animals.

Feed plants are inspected by the F.D.A., not the Department of Agriculture. In 2001, the F.D.A. was so short of inspectors that nearly a third of the country's 10,000 feed plants were not inspected.

[Keith_Hixson]

Mad Cow Disease won't transfere if you cook your meat well.

Well Done Guys, Well Done! They are telling us in Washington the State. Its all suppose to be WELL DONE !

Ah Shucks,

I can't have my medium rare steaks any longer.

What's this world coming to!

Everything has to be well done.

I think I'll go elk hunting.

I can eat medium rare steaks of elk.


Keith

[MORTARDUDE]

http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=...3-103657-3424r

( several disturbing points here I have marked with an && )

USDA refused to release mad cow records
By Steve Mitchell
United Press International
Published 12/23/2003 11:05 PM
View printer-friendly version


WASHINGTON, Dec. 23 (UPI) -- Although the United States Department of Agriculture insisted the U.S. beef supply is safe Tuesday after announcing the first documented case of mad cow disease in the United States, the agency for six months repeatedly refused to release its tests for mad cow to United Press International.

& & The USDA claims to have tested approximately 20,000 cows for the disease in 2002 and 2003, but has been unable to provide any documentation in support of this to UPI, which first requested the information in July.

& & In addition, former USDA veterinarians tell UPI they have long suspected the disease was in U.S herds and there are probably additional infected animals.

USDA Secretary Ann M. Veneman announced late Tuesday during a hastily scheduled news briefing that a cow slaughtered Dec. 9 on a farm in Mabton, Wash., had tested positive for mad cow disease. The farm has been quarantined but the meat from the animal may have already passed into the human food supply.

The slaughtered meat was sent for processing to Midway Meats in Washington and the USDA is currently trying to trace if the meat went for human consumption, Veneman said.

The fear is mad cow disease can infect humans and cause a brain-wasting condition known as variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease that is always fatal. More than 100 people contracted this disease in the United Kingdom after a widespread outbreak of mad cow disease in that country in the 1980s.

An outbreak of mad cow disease in the United States has the potential to dwarf the situation in the United Kingdom because the American beef industry is far larger and U.S. beef is exported to countries all over the globe.

"We're talking about billions of people" around the world who potentially have been exposed to U.S. beef, Lester Friedlander, a former USDA veterinarian who has been insisting mad cow is present in American herds for years, told UPI.

The USDA insisted the case is probably isolated and the US beef supply is safe. "I plan to serve beef for my Christmas dinner," Veneman said, "and we remain confident in the safety of our food supply."

Responded Friedlander: "She might as well kiss her (behind) goodbye, then."

Veneman went on to say she had confidence in the USDA surveillance system for detecting mad cow and protecting the public, noting the agency has tested more than 20,000 cattle for the disease this year.

This represents only a small percentage of the millions of cows in the U.S. herd, however, and experts say current procedures are unlikely to detect mad cow.

& & The Washington cow was tested because it was a so-called downer cow -- a cow unable to stand on its own -- which is a sign of mad cow disease. However, the United States sees approximately 200,000 of these per year or about 10 times as many animals are tested for the disease.

& & USDA officials told UPI as recently as Dec. 17 the agency still is searching for documentation of its mad cow testing results from 2002 and 2003.

UPI initially requested the documents on July 10, and the agency sent a response letter dated July 24, saying it had launched a search for any documents pertaining to mad cow tests from 2002 and 2003.

"If any documents exist, they will be forwarded," USDA official Michael Marquis wrote in the letter.

Despite this and a 30-day limit under the Freedom of Information Act on responding to such a request, the USDA never sent any corresponding documents. The agency's FOI office also did not return several calls from UPI placed over a series of months.

Finally, UPI threatened legal action in early December if the agency did not respond.

In a Dec. 17 letter to UPI from USDA Freedom of Information Act Office Andrea E. Fowler, the agency wrote: "Your request has been forwarded to the (Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service) for processing and to search for the record responsive to your earlier request."

& & To date, the USDA has not said if any records exist or if they will be sent to UPI.

"It's always concerned me that they haven't used the same rapid testing technique that's used in Europe," where mad cow has been detected in several additional countries outside of the United Kingdom, Michael Schwochert, a retired USDA veterinarian in Ft. Morgan, Colo., told UPI.

"It was almost like they didn't want to find mad cow disease," Schwochert said.

He noted he had been informed that approximately six months ago a cow displaying symptoms suggestive of mad cow disease showed up at the X-cel slaughtering plant in Ft. Morgan.

Once cows are unloaded off the truck they are required to be inspected by USDA veterinarians. However, the cow was spotted by plant employees before USDA officials saw it and "it went back out on a special truck and they called the guys in the office and said don't say anything about this," Schwochert said.

Veneman said the Washington case "does not pose any kind of significant risk to the human food chain."

Friedlander called that assessment, aptly enough, "B.S." Referring to the USDA's failure to provide their testing documentation to UPI, he said, "The government doesn't have records to substantiate their testing so how do they know whether this is an isolated case." The agency also cannot provide any assurance that this animal did not get processed for human consumption, he said.

Schwochert agreed with that, saying the USDA's sparse testing means they cannot say with any confidence whether there are additional cases or not.

Both Schwochert and Friedlander said the report of a mad cow case would devastate the U.S. beef industry.

"It scares the hell out of me what it's going to do to the cattle industry," Schwochert said. "This could be catastrophic."

Only hours after Veneman's announcement, Japan -- the biggest importer of U.S. beef -- and South Korea both banned the importation of American meat.

The American Meat Institute, a trade group in Arlington, Va., representing the U.S. meat and poultry industry, maintained the U.S. beef supply is safe for human consumption.

"First and foremost, the U.S. beef supply is safe," AMI spokesman Dan Murphy told UPI. "We think its safe for U.S. consumers to eat."

This is because infectious prions, thought to be the causative agent of mad cow and vCJD, are not found in muscle tissue that comprises hamburgers and steaks, he said. They are generally located in brain and spinal cord tissue.

& & However, recent studies have suggested prions may occur, albeit in smaller numbers, in muscle tissue, and bits of brain and spinal cord tissue have been detected in hamburger meat.

Other protective measures have also been put in place that should protect consumers, Murphy said.

Mad cow disease is thought to be spread by feeding infected cow tissue back to cattle -- a practice that was common in the United Kingdom and is thought to have contributed to their widespread outbreak. The practice has been banned in the United States by the Food and Drug Administration since 1997, which should help ensure this is "an isolated case," Murphy said.

& & A report from the General Accounting Office issued just last year, however, found some ranchers in the United States still violate the feed ban and do feed cow tissue to cattle.

The GAO concluded: "While (mad cow disease) has not been found in the United States, federal actions do not sufficiently ensure that all (mad cow)-infected animals or products are kept out or that if (mad cow) were found, it would be detected promptly and not spread to other cattle through animal feed or enter the human food supply."

--

Steve Mitchell is UPI's medical correspondent. E-mail sciencemail@upi.com

[MORTARDUDE]

http://www.rense.com/general46/prion.htm

As We Said - Prion Disease IS
Being Spread Via Blood!
From Patricia Doyle
PhD dr_p_doyle@hotmail.com
12-17-3

15 Patients Given Prion Death Sentence Via Blood Donor

From Patricia Doyle,
PhD dr_p_doyle@hotmail.com
12-17-3

Hello, Jeff - Finally, the medical community admits that nvCJD (the human form of mad cow/BSE) is transmitted to patients via blood donor.

I am sure that they hated to admit to blood donor transmission of nvCJD. The evidence is so overwhelming that they had to begin to present it.

Jeff, you and I have been claiming that prion disease spreads via blood for many years now. The next step is to ask the 64 million dollar question: Is Chronic Wasting Disease spread via blood and what are the implications when infected deer, elk, and moose are shot and bleed into the environment? (And since prions have no trouble being cooked, grilled, roasted, sauteed, fried, BBQ'd, or turned into jerky...humans can be infected by eating the meat of any CWD deer, elk and moose, etc. -JR)

Patricia Doyle

nvCJD Spread Through Blood Transmission - UK

A ProMED-mail post

ProMED-mail is a program of the International Society for Infectious Diseases <http://www.isid.org>


nvCJD Suspected To Have Been Contract By Blood Donation

BBC News Online
12-17-3

UK: variant CJD suspected to have been contracted by blood donation

Health secretary John Reid said that a man who received donor blood during an operation in 1997 developed variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease [abbreviated as CJD (new var.) or vCJD in ProMED-mail] and died 6 years later. The blood was taken long before the donor was diagnosed with the brain-wasting disease.

Measures already exist which attempt to cut the risk of CJD transmission during blood transfusions. So far, 143 cases of vCJD have been diagnosed in the UK, although the numbers of new cases are falling. So far there is no established treatment for the illness, which causes massive brain damage and normally kills within months of being detected.

Other people have received blood from donors who went on to develop vCJD -- 15 in total. All have been contacted and offered counselling. However, none of these people has so far gone on to develop the disease, although it may have a long incubation period.

The risks of receiving blood carrying the "rogue" prions that cause vCJD are largely unknown, although previously thought to be tiny, as no confirmed cases could be identified. In this case, the donor involved gave blood in 1997, and fell ill with [variant] CJD in 1999, dying shortly afterwards. The disease did not develop in the recipient until this year, and the patient died earlier this month. Postmortem results appear to confirm vCJD.

Mr Reid, in a statement to the House of Commons, said: "This is possibly not a proven causal connection -- it's also possible that both individuals acquired [variant] CJD separately. This is a single incident, so it is impossible to be sure which was the route of the infection. However, the possibility of this being transfusion-related cannot be discounted. That is the conclusion of the chief medical officer and experts. It is because this is the first report from anywhere in the world of the possible transmission of vCJD from person to person via blood that I thought it right to come to the despatch box to inform the House on a precautionary basis."

However, he conceded that there was a chance this was the 1st recorded case of blood from an apparently healthy donor causing [variant] CJD in the recipient. One other person is thought to have received blood from the same donor.

The announcement is likely to cause concern among the tens of thousands of patients who receive blood transfusions each year. The concern is that, because of the long incubation period of vCJD in humans, other regular donors might be carrying the illness without knowing it -- or having any way of finding out. However, since this transfusion, stringent measures have been introduced in an effort to make blood taken from UK donors safer. The white cells from the blood -- thought to be more likely to harbour prions -- are routinely removed from UK donations. In addition, many blood products used in the UK are manufactured using donated blood from elsewhere in the world.

The US banned the use of UK donor blood when fears over vCJD first arose. Mr Reid has asked the government's expert committee on blood to urgently examine whether new measures are needed to ensure the safety of donated blood. He has also asked the National Blood Service to enter discussions with the medical royal colleges and NHS hospitals to ensure blood products are only used when they are only absolutely necessary.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/default.stm

-- ProMED-mail

[This is unwelcome news. Further information is awaited concerning the nature of the tests carried out to establish the vCJD diagnosis. - Mod.CP]

Patricia A. Doyle, PhD Please visit my "Emerging Diseases" message board at: http://www.clickitnews.com/ubbthreads/postlist.php?
Cat=&Board=emergingdiseases Zhan le Devlesa tai sastimasa Go with God and in Good Health

[HARDCORE]

DUDE -

These inspection figures certainly do give one cause for concern!!

VERITAS

[Keith_Hixson]

The thing that disturbs me the most is: the FDA allowing cattle that are sick to put into the food chain. This cow was showing signs of illness and that is why she was butchered. She was a dairy cow. When we had a sick cow on the dairy farm. If they didn't respond to treatment (penicillin shots) they were put down and buried or sent to rendering factory.

Putting down cows into the food source is just not civilized and that needs to change.

Keith

[39mto39g]

The desease only effects the brain and spinal cord. It does not go into muscle. You can eat your steak any way you want. Just don't eat brain. I just got through eating a big-oh steak, nocked the Mooooo off on the BBQ pit and thats all. MMMMM-Mm!

Ron

[reeb]

Sing to the tune 96 Tears:
too many steers dropped for us to carry on
it's in the lab now,
they have left me,
cows are laughin,
tongues out at me
but watch out now,
they gonna be scared
they stay together,
quarantined a little while
and then we gonna test you,
for B.S.E
you could be dyin,
mighty sick steers,
die die

when the results come up
all this will stop,
you'll be away from here
slaughtered , and chopped
and I might save
my farm here
but I can't see it,
even now
I am way down here
wonderin how
to get you to market,
here and now
and you'll die die die
you'll just die

too many steers dropped for our meat to be buyin,
too many steers dropped for us to carry on
who's gonna buy mighty sick steers?
who's gonna buy mighty sick steers?
who's gonna buy buy buy buy now?
I'm gonna cry cry cry cry
mighty sick steers, I hope you die now
mighty sick sters, I hear you cry now
night and day, yeah. all night long
uh mighty sick steers, buy buy buy
come on baby who is gonna buy now?

enough...........

[MORTARDUDE]

This is an updated article that was originally published in July 2000.

My opinion : Before you make up your mind about the safety of the food you eat, it would be a good idea to do some serious research. This is just one viewpoint of many that are available, besides the U.S. Government's version. Thank you for reading this.

Larry

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Mad Cows In The USA

Mad Cow disease has turned Britain on its head. Even as the number of infected cattle in the United Kingdom has been reduced-over 180,000 cases have been confirmed, nearly four million cows have been destroyed-the likelihood of widespread human infection has increased. The disease, bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) in cows and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) in humans, literally destroys the brain, filling its tissue with spongy holes. The growing number of British victims of "new variant" CJD, mostly young people in their prime who contracted the brain sickness from tainted meat, is a grim precursor to an uncertain future. Consumption of British beef has plummeted; financial losses have been catastrophic. An exhaustive report, released by the official UK BSE Inquiry last summer, traced the history of the continuing epidemic and confirmed the negligence of the authorities.

Mad Cows have now been found in France, Italy, Belgium, Switzerland, Ireland, Spain, Holland, Portugal, Denmark, Luxembourg, Brazil and Canada. The US Department of Agriculture maintains that no Mad Cows exist here, and has tested nearly 12,000 bovine brains in the last decade-of 1.25 billion cattle raised in that period-and found not a single case of the British variant of Mad Cow disease. It is primarily this data upon which the agency bases their denials.

But what strains of the disease is the USDA looking for? Would the USDA actually alert the world if they found BSE in their laboratory, therefore precipitating the kind of panic seen in the UK and Europe?

The stakes are extremely high. One infected animal, whose remains are "rendered," powdered and mixed into feed, can infect thousands of other animals, and the thousands of people who eat them.

Leading food-safety advocates question the agency's small test sample, methodology and motives. They point out that USDA scientists are not likely to find the British variant of Mad Cow because, in fact, US cattle are likely infected with an entirely different strain-or strains-of BSE. Similar Transmissible Spongiform Encephalopathies (TSEs), or "prion diseases," such as scrapie (with 20 strains, and found in 45 US states) and Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD), have been found in populations of American sheep, goats, deer, elk, mink, and squirrels. The deadly infection is acquired through contaminated feed and maternal transmission, and probably from contaminated areas and through close proximity of animals to one another.

Mad People

Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, the human TSE, is still considered so rare-the medical literature states only one in a million cases of "classic" CJD occurs in humans-that few doctors and neurologists even recognize the symptoms, which are frequently misdiagnosed as Alzheimer's disease. CJD robs victims of lucidity, control and life over a period ranging from six months to three years from the onset of symptoms, which can take from 10 to 40 years to manifest.

Like all TSEs, CJD is 100% fatal. There is no treatment or cure.

As no blood test for the living is available, CJD has been definitively diagnosed only through brain biopsy. The US Centers for Disease Control has repeatedly refused to mandate CJD-unlike HIV and many other diseases-as reportable. With stories of CJD cases increasing, support groups have sprung up around the country and on the Web to demand action.

The US Department of Agriculture sees no reason to advise the public at this time that eating US beef or pork constitutes a significant risk of infection with CJD, acquired from animals with TSEs. Neither does the USDA warn against other risks such as blood meal or horticultural bone meal [see sidebar below], which can be easily inhaled or enter the body through the eyes, a direct route to the brain. The FDA has only recently communicated that numerous drugs and dietary supplements containing bovine ingredients, perhaps even gelatin capsules themselves, and cosmetics which include collagen and tallow are at uncertain risk of carrying the infectious agent-a nearly indestructible mutant protein known as a "prion"-which apparently causes CJD and other TSEs.

Neither have US doctors, surgeons and dentists been notified that surgical instruments are at highest risk of transmitting the infection, as standard autoclave sterilization does not neutralize infectious prions. Blood, blood products, bovine extracts and transplant organs are not screened for CJD in the US, although around the world infected organ recipients, who developed symptoms sometimes decades after treatment, have been traced to infected donors.

See No Evil, Here No Evil

Lack of government action is based on the assumption-or deception-that the United States is completely free of Mad Cow disease, other domesticated animals are equally unaffected, and that only the very rare "classic" strain of CJD, which primarily affects the elderly, and not British nvCJD or another strain, exists here. In actuality, a careful reading of the evidence indicates Mad Cows-as well as Mad sheep, deer and elk-roam the land, and the incidence of human CJD is exponentially higher than the Centers for Disease Control has made clear. Several key studies show it is likely that tens or even hundreds of thousands of people are dying right now of undiagnosed or misdiagnosed CJD.


In the wake of many CJD-contaminated blood recalls, on April 17, 2000 the US Food and Drug Administration and American Red Cross quietly instituted a "precautionary" ban on blood donations from individuals who have spent a total of six months or more in Britain between Jan. 1, 1980, and Dec. 31, 1996, although this is expected to reduce the shortage-plagued US blood supply by 2.2%. Disingenuous doublespeak on the Red Cross donor Q&A is not reassuring: "Q. Why are these people deferred from donating now, if they weren't in the past? A. Deferral criteria do not apply to donors until the criteria is implemented...." A Red Cross press release statement that "There is no evidence that nvCJD is transmissible through blood or other means" is simply not supported by current research.
"Top regulatory agencies in two nations don't make a decision of this magnitude on the basis of the meager information that has been publicly disclosed," says Dr. Tom Pringle, a molecular biologist and the energetic administrator of the encyclopedic Official Mad Cow Disease Home Page, a project of the Sperling Biomedical Foundation. Pringle believes that such steps are "too little, too late. With this many millions of Americans and Canadians exposed and possibly incubating disease for fifteen years already, it is only a matter of time before nvCJD manifests itself in North America in a person who has already given blood. And a lot of people there for under six months will continue to donate." Pringle has been quoted in recent articles in the New York Times, although his printed comments have been considerably toned down, to his chagrin.

Considering that the British Mad Cow crisis destroyed the UK beef market, precipitated a worldwide ban on British imports, exposed an official cover-up, and continues to induce severe public anxiety (even suicide among the "worried well"), many critics doubt the US government is offering complete and accurate information concerning grave problems affecting the large and powerful domestic meat, rendering, bone, gelatin, blood and medical industries.

However, if one puts together all the pieces of the puzzle, gaping regulatory loopholes and evidence of widespread infection become apparent. In truth, America has probably been harboring many TSEs for decades. CJD's tremendous scientific complexity, long incubation period and symptomatic similarity to Alzheimer's has likely veiled the leading edge of a deadly epidemic in the United States.

How Now, Mad Cow

Mad Cow disease first gained the world's attention in March 1996, when officials of the World Health Organization and British authorities were forced to admit that 10 deaths from CJD were directly related to eating tainted beef. After widespread infection of British cattle was revealed, millions of cows were burned in high-security incinerators and the residue treated as biohazard waste. To date, nearly 100 people in Britain have been diagnosed with nvCJD, although the total number of cases will certainly run much higher.

How much higher is a matter of debate. Dr. Richard Lacey, a leading microbiologist whose early warnings were ignored by the British government, cautions that BSE "is much more serious than AIDS." On Dec. 17, 1999 Lord Phillips, the BSE Inquiry chairman, stated that the known cases of nvCJD may turn out to be just the "tip of the iceberg." On Jan. 7, 2000 the European Union's Scientific Steering Committee warned that millions of European consumers were at risk of developing CJD. And in July, 1999 neurogeneticist John Collinge, a member of the British government's Spongiform Encephalopathy Advisory Committee who has warned of "a disaster of Biblical proportions," stated in The Lancet, "Studies... suggest that the early variant CJD cases may have been exposed during the preclinical phase of the BSE epidemic. It must therefore be considered that many cases may follow from later exposure in an epidemic that would be expected to evolve over decades."

On Feb, 28, 2000 The Sunday Times of London carried a long-dreaded report, filed by Science Editor Jonathan Leake: "Doctors are investigating Britain's first suspected CJD baby... born to a woman who has since been found to have new variant CJD... The case has also endangered medical staff attending the baby's birth because the mother's placenta contains high levels of prions... The revelation coincides with a decision by the Department of Health to make formal preparations for a likely surge in CJD cases... It will mean that any woman incubating nvCJD who becomes pregnant could unknowingly transmit it to her children. Since almost everyone in Britain has been exposed to contaminated beef products and the disease is thought to take many years to develop, it could mean that any epidemic would last for generations." The mother has since died; the official diagnosis of the baby's condition is inconclusive.

All the known nvCJD victims express a genetic trait shared by 38% of the human population and all bovines. (No test for this gene variant is available; the second and third variants for prion protein at Codon 129 on Chromosome 20 might simply effect longer incubation periods in the rest of the population.) Deployment of a simple CJD blood test, for TSE infection or simply genetic susceptibility, in the UK and elsewhere has been delayed, deferring possible discovery of widespread human infection. In Britain, speculates Pringle, "The top level of government itself does not know-nor want to know-the scope of the epidemic. This is to establish 'plausible deniability.'"

A Clever Pathogen

The practice of feeding domestic animals "rendered" protein supplements-the boiled-down, powdered remains of slaughterhouse waste-spread BSE in the UK. Surviving temperatures of up to 600 C (in an experiment carried out by the US National Institutes of Heath), mutant prions from each BSE-infected cow infected thousands of other bovines, as huge batches of feed were mixed and fed back to cattle.

Feeding mammalian protein to ruminants was banned in the UK in 1989. In August 1997 the US FDA finally issued weak regulations addressing this common practice. Dr. Michael Hanson, chief scientist of Consumers Union (publisher of Consumer Reports) describes the rules: "All they said is that you've got to label it 'Do not feed to cattle and other ruminants.' Farmers can walk in a feed store and still buy it. Nobody asks 'Are you feeding it to cattle or pigs?' They have to keep records of where the material came from for one year, for a disease with an average incubation period of five years. It's a joke. The way the rule is written, you can take scrapie-infested sheep, CWD-infested deer and BSE-infested animals and legally put that in animal feed and give it to pigs, chickens-anything but ruminants, as long as it's labeled. That's outrageous." Compliance is voluntary and virtually impossible to monitor or enforce. Incredibly, Hanson notes, "The new thing is to feed calves spray-dried bovine plasma. It's hardly processed, so you're not knocking down the infectivity-and you can put it right in the feed."

Additionally, according to Hanson, the USDA has "functionally ignored the potential TSE in pigs." Their very short factory-farm life span of six to eight months necessarily hides any symptoms of TSE infection. Pigs and chickens are still routinely fed rendered protein, which often includes the remains of "downer" cows-animals too sick to stand-which are most suspected of harboring BSE. After inedible pig parts are rendered, they are often fed back to pigs, cows and chickens. Fermented chicken manure is routinely fed to millions of cows and pigs, in a perverse loop of inexpensive husbandry and forced cannibalism.

"Their first impulse would be to suppress it," Hanson says of the government's TSE detection program. "Their strategy might be, act like you're looking, but really do a don't look, don't find." However, as Pringle points out, "Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence."

A new Swiss test which detects TSEs in live animals has drastically increased estimates of infected cows in Europe, as many asymptomatic cattle with subclinical BSE have been discovered. BSE's incubation period is from three to 10 years, and cattle are usually slaughtered before symptoms might manifest. Humans consuming subclinical animals are still at tremendous risk of contracting CJD. John Collinge has told the official BSE Inquiry that some cows may be carrying a dangerous silent infection: "It may be that there is rather more infectivity in muscle or other tissues in those animals and that is why they do not have a brain disease." Last year, Dr. Mary Jo Schmerr, chief scientist for prion diseases at the US National Animal Disease Center in Ames, Iowa, devised a different TSE test, and the UK CJD Surveillance Unit in Edinburgh, Scotland has been working with her on a new blood test for humans.

Considering the worldwide urgency of the problem, the unavailability of a simple CJD blood test would seem to indicate a problem of public policy and politics, rather than one of scientific obstacles.


An Indestructible Pathogen
Not a virus, not a bacterium, the abnormal version of a protein known as a "prion" represents a biological threat never before seen on Earth. Able to withstand conditions which kill any known pathogen, mutant prions easily jump the species barrier, fatally infecting populations of humans or animals with TSEs.

The 1997 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded to San Francisco scientist Stanley Prusiner for his discovery of "Prions-a new biological principle of infection," even as others expressed incredulity at an infectious agent containing no genetic material whatsoever. Thought to replicate in the manner of crystals, abnormal prions malform neighboring prions on contact, causing them to "fold" improperly and mutate their neighbors in a domino pyramid of devastation, until the host develops spongy holes in the brain, loses nervous system function and dies. Unlike normal prions, mutants do not break down when meat is ingested. The immune system does not attack the invader, because rogue and normal prions are chemically identical.

The brain and spinal cord are the primary-but not only-reservoirs of infectious material in humans and animals. Current USDA and FDA regulations are designed to prevent this material from ending up on the American dinner plate, but according to Michael Hanson, the automatic meat-recovery (AMR) systems in wide use at modern slaughterhouses, which mechanically strip the spine of flesh, routinely include banned material in the meat. Even the federal Food Safety and Inspection Service has found spinal-cord fragments and nervous-system tissue in AMR meat samples. It has also been shown that, upon impact on the skull, pneumatic slaughterhouse stun guns can force bovine brain matter into the bloodstream and other, edible tissues.

The Evidence

The scientific evidence for numerous undiscovered cases of CJD in the US lies largely upon two university studies. In written comments to a Harvard/ USDA BSE risk-analysis project on Sept. 28, 1998, Hanson summarized, "A study at the University of Pittsburgh, in which autopsies were done on 54 demented patients diagnosed as having probable or possible Alzheimer's or some other dementia (but not CJD), found three cases (or 5.5%) of CJD among the 54 studied (Boller et al., 1989). A Yale study found that of 46 patients diagnosed with Alzheimer's, six (or 13%) were CJD at autopsy (Manuelidis and Manuelidis, 1989). Since there are over two million cases of Alzheimer's disease currently in the United States, if even a small percentage of them turned out to be CJD, there could be a hidden CJD epidemic." These studies indicate an exponential increase over the expected incidence of "sporadic" CJD, providing preliminary yet persuasive evidence of an unrecognized outbreak of CJD in the USA.

Another pivotal study was undertaken in 1991 by Dr. Richard Marsh, a TSE researcher at the University of Wisconsin. Marsh showed that US cows inoculated with tissues obtained from TSE-infected mink-whose diet consisted of 95% offal from downer cows-developed BSE.

The BSE strain was different from that seen in Europe, and proved that other strains might indeed exist in America.

(Significantly, rather than exhibiting classic "Mad Cow" symptoms, the animals simply collapsed, qualifying for the all-inclusive "Downer Cow Syndrome" which affects 100,000 of 100 million US bovines annually.) When the brains of the infected cattle were fed back to mink, they duly developed transmissible mink encephalopathy, suggesting "the presence of a previously unrecognized scrapie-like infection in cattle in the United States."

On Feb. 1, 2000 US Secretary of Agriculture Dan Glickman declared a scrapie "emergency that threatens the sheep and goat industry of this country," effectively admitting that the disease, with 20 known strains, is out of control. "The sheep thing in the US is demonstrably worse," says Pringle. "They know they've got scrapie in thirty-nine states, that there are a lot of really infected flocks, and they know those flocks are being eaten by people, and there's no effort to keep scrapie out of the human food chain. They've gotten away with murder."

Bad Blood

Firm experimental evidence that blood can contain infectious prions was produced last November. In the absence of strict government regulations, some medical organizations have voluntarily recalled large lots of fractionated blood products containing donations from people later found to have CJD, usually after some have reached recipients. Over the past 10 years, at least $100 million worth of plasma products have reportedly been destroyed.

Surgical transmission of CJD is a very real problem. In Britain, it is now even illegal to reuse contact lenses for fear of spreading CJD contamination through the eyes. Many cases of transmission through transplants of corneas, brain-matter grafts and other organs have been documented. It is inevitable that worldwide sterilization procedures will undergo drastic modification in the face of the prion.

Many drugs are derived from cattle, including growth hormones from pituitary glands; adrenaline products; cortisone; insulin for diabetics; and medications for the treatment of stomach ulcers. Thromboplastin, a common blood coagulant used in surgery, is derived from bovine brains. Pituitary extracts from Mad Cows (as well as human donors with CJD) have been traced as the cause of CJD infection in recipients.

"The thing that worries me is the immunization of the children," says Pringle. "Every kid in the United States can't go to school without their shots... They're growing vaccines out of fetal-calf serum. Then you're injecting four-year-old children-which is much worse than eating, 100,000 times more effective... Every schoolchild in the UK has already been immunized with vaccine made from serum from infected bovines."

On Feb. 8, the New York Times ran a groundbreaking article, headlined "5 Drug Makers Use Material With Possible Mad Cow Link," confirming allegations made by critics that many vaccines were likely produced using contaminated bovine serum, including "some regularly given to millions of American children, including common vaccines to prevent polio, diptheria and tetanus."

Mad Deer, Sad People

In the Southwest US, an outbreak of Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD), a TSE affecting deer and elk, is now raging, with 5-15% of wild elk in areas of Colorado and Wyoming reportedly infected. The case of Doug McEwen, 30, a hunter who died of CJD in Utah on March 28, 1999, starkly illustrates the tragedy surrounding the illness. McEwen, who regularly ate deer meat, was diagnosed with classic CJD although, like many of the British victims, his youth might seem to indicate another, more virulent strain, as only 1% of classic CJD patients develop symptoms at his age. Inexplicably, blood plasma donated by McEwen was cleared by the authorities and distributed during and after his death. McEwen's situation was graphically reported by Mark Kennedy in the Ottawa Citizen the day before he died:

"Tracie McEwen reaches over to the dying man... As he moans softly, she strokes his arm and kisses his forehead. 'It's OK. Doug, it's OK.'

"Tracie married Doug exactly four years ago. She marked their anniversary by pouring sparkling cider into cups, making a toast, and lovingly dropping some into Doug's mouth....p>"It started slowly. First, there was the memory loss and the inability to do simple math, then the light tremors. Eventually came violent seizures as well as unexplainable outbursts of emotion-hysterical laughter, sometimes followed by uncontrollable crying. By late January, he could no longer speak in sentences....

"'This is the worst thing I have seen,' [Tracie McEwen] says. 'I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy.'"

For nearly two years McEwen had donated blood plasma, which was processed by Bayer into fractionated blood products in Clayton, NC, then shipped to 46 countries around the globe. "The scope of this is breathtaking," Tom Pringle says of the decision to release McEwen's blood. "You've got a time bomb ticking in millions and millions of people. And as they become donors, it spreads further." Of the infected deer which almost certainly led to McEwen's death, Pringle is unequivocal: "I think they have scrapie. Most cases trace back to Ft. Collins, Colorado at the Foothills Research Station, an experimental facility which was contaminated." Wild animals might also contract the disease by raiding contaminated feed meant for livestock.

It has recently been proven experimentally that even fly larvae, after eating infected tissue, can transmit scrapie to hamsters; the larvae were still infectious after death. Nevertheless, the US government's BSE Red Book-Emergency Operations handbook states, "Cleaning and disinfection is not necessary to prevent the spread of BSE."

Pringle is not optimistic. In the US, "it would be a wrenching experience to totally get away from the bovine economy, and realistically, they're only going to take half-measures. It's like a joke now to talk about containment. It's like locking the barn door after the horse is gone. WTO, NAFTA, has really helped globalize CJD. You don't know where your sutures are coming from, your shampoo, your sunscreen. The Pandora's box has been opened."

Warning: Bone Meal is Hazardous to Your Health
Due to uncertainty concerning the existence of Mad Cow disease in the USA, High Times no longer recommends the use of bone meal as a soil amendment, as it is often made from material at highest risk of carrying the infectious agent which causes CJD in humans.

According to Tom Pringle, Ph.D., "Bone meal is a higher risk material than blood meal. Cases of CJD have often associated with gardens and farms. . . You put this bone meal around the roses, you get the aerosol in your eyes, your nose, cuts on your hand, inhale it. The problem with the bone meal is it's made out of spinal cord. They can pay to have it hauled off or they're going to grind it up and make a gardening supplement. The eyes are a direct pipeline to the brain, a prime route of infection experimentally."

Carleton Gajdusek, who discovered in 1957 that "kuru" (CJD) in New Guinea was transmitted through cannibalistic practices, and whose work forms the foundation upon which today's TSE research is based, has no doubt of the extreme hazards of bone meal. In Deadly Feasts: Tracking the Secrets of a Terrifying New Plague, a shocking account of the worldwide spread of TSEs, Gajdusek tells Pulitzer-Prize winning author Richard Rhodes, "'It's made from downer cattle [those most likely to be infected with Mad Cow disease]. Ground extremely fine. The instructions on the bag warn you not to open it in a closed room. Gets up your nose.' The Nobel-laureate virologist who knows more than anyone else in the world about transmissible spongiform encephalopathy looked at me meaningfully: 'Do you use bone meal on your roses?' I told him I did. He nodded. 'I wouldn't if I were you.'"

Oprah Has a Cow

The possibility that Mad Cows might be stumbling around the American ranch was first brought to the American mainstream by the Oprah Winfrey Show and guest Howard Lyman of the Humane Society of the United States, a former cattle rancher turned vegetarian. After Oprah swore off hamburgers on national television, meat consumption plummeted and the Texas Cattleman's Association stupidly amplified the issue by immediately suing Winfrey. Oprah won the suit and subsequent appeal, brought under Texas' "veggie libel law," which makes it illegal to slander a food product. "Long live free speech," she said upon news of the Feb. 1998 verdict. "This has been one of my most painful experiences, but it has made me a stronger person. . . I refuse to be muzzled."

Transcript:

Oprah's report on Mad Cow Disease
April 15th, 1996

Oprah: You said this disease cold make Aids look like the common cold?


Howard: Absolutely.

Oprah: That's an extreme statement you know?

Howard: Absolutely, and what we're looking at right now is we're following exactly the same path that they followed in England. Ten years of dealing with it as public relations rather than doing something substantial about it. 100,000 cows per year in the United States are fine at night, dead in the morning. The majority of those cows are rounded up, ground up, fed back to other cows. If only one of them has Mad Cow Disease, has the potential to effect thousands. Remember today, the United States, 14% of all cows by volume are ground up, turned into feed, and fed back to other animals.

Oprah: But cows are herbivores, they shouldn't be eating other cows.

Howard: That's exactly right, and what we should be doing is exactly what nature says, we should have them eating grass not other cows. We've not only turned them into carnivores, we've turned them into cannibals.

Oprah: Now see, wait a minute, wait a minute. Let me just ask you this right now Howard. How do you know the cows are ground up and fed back to the other cows?

Howard: Oh, I've seen it. These are USDA statistics, they're not something we're making up.

Oprah: Now doesn't that concern you all a little bit, right here, hearing that?

Audience: Yeah!

Oprah: It has just stopped me cold from eating another burger!

[MORTARDUDE]

Updated info from the author of the above article ...

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Subj: Regarding Mad Cow

Greetings:

I am the author of a definitive book chapter on Mad Cow disease, published in "Everything You Know is Wrong," (Disinformation Company, 2002). If you are planning on headlining the Mad Cow news out of Washington State, please don't believe that this is the "first" case.

If you would like to link to my story, it's posted on my website (gabekphoto.com). The direct link is:

http://www.gabekphoto.com/stories.htm click on "Bovine Bioterrorism"

You may also want to link to PR Watch and John Stauber's excellent "Mad Cow USA" info page, as well as Purefood.org's Mad Cow site run by Dr. Michael Gregor:

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

Peace,

Gabe Kirchheimer