Mad Cow Disease hasn't gone away

[T_i_B]

Just look at Ann Coulter for starters. :eyes:

Seriously though here is a UK view on the whole mad cow matter.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,482-949837,00.html

IT WAS profoundly disappointing to watch Ann Veneman, the US Agriculture Secretary, announce the first case of BSE in the United States at Christmas, not simply because another country was blighted by this degenerative brain disease, but because the presentation was all too familiar. That an Agriculture rather than Health Secretary sought to reassure about risk to human health, and that she said she would be feeding her own children beef, was as reminiscent of the early stages of the outbreak in Britain as it is scientifically inane. There are many lessons the Americans could learn from the British experience, and the following months will prove crucial.

Has America taken this problem seriously enough? Ann Veneman’s later statement announced some sound measures to protect the public — notably bans of high-risk cattle tissues in human food, on air-injection stunning of cattle and the use of mechanically recovered meat.

However, some of her comments resonated in the British ear: “I will stress again that our food supply and the public health remain safe” and “our goal is to see trade resume as quickly as possible”. But one piece of scientific advice given repeatedly to the British Government on the risks of BSE is that “absence of evidence is not evidence of absence” and no doubt our US scientific colleagues will advise likewise.

WHAT would reassure is proper surveillance of animals, using tests at abattoirs and of fallen stock. It will be interesting to see if Veneman’s scientific advisers agree that testing 20,000 cattle per year in the US (out of a total of more than 35 million slaughtered annually) is the “very aggressive surveillance programme” that she described. If their BSE case is due to contaminated feed, it is hard to imagine that there will not be others in other herds.

[maha]

1. Ann Coulter

I laughed. Good one!

[hlthe2b]

2. The Times has become subscription only online?

geez..... too bad...