BSE, BOVINE - USA (06): CONFIRMED - MAD COW DISEASE

[BrklynLiberal]

A NEWSLETTER I RECEIVED>>>>

BSE, BOVINE - USA (06): CONFIRMED
*********************************
A ProMED-mail post
<http://www.promedmail.org>
ProMED-mail is a program of the
International Society for Infectious Diseases
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Date: 24 Jun 2005
From: ProMED-mail <[e-mail]>
Source: The Guardian
<http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-5096778,00.html>


Tests confirm second mad cow case in US
---------------------------------------
WASHINGTON (AP) - Tests have confirmed mad cow disease (bovine spongiform
encephalopathy; BSE) in a US cow previously cleared of having the brain
wasting illness, the Agriculture Department said Friday. It is the second
case of BSE in the United States.

An internationally recognized laboratory in Weybridge, England, confirmed
the case of BSE after US tests produced conflicting results, Agriculture
Secretary Mike Johanns said.

Human health was not at risk, Johanns said. The animal was a "downer",
meaning it was unable to walk. Such animals are banned from the food
supply. The department has said there was no reason to believe the animal
was imported.

New tests were ordered two weeks ago. Those results came back positive,
leading officials to seek confirmation from the Weybridge lab. The
department also performed more tests at its lab in Ames, Iowa. The first
case confirmed in the US was in December 2003, a dairy cow imported from
Canada. "I am encouraged that our interlocking safeguards are working
exactly as intended," Johanns said at a news conference. "This animal was
blocked from entering the food supply because of the firewalls we have in
place. Americans have every reason to continue to be confident in the
safety of our beef," he said. Johanns also announced the department will do
more sensitive tests as a matter of routine.

The department has come under fire for not resolving conflicting test
results on this animal in November. The department did initial screening
using a "rapid test", which was positive. A more detailed
immunohistochemistry, or IHC test, was negative. But the department did not
conduct a third round, using a test called the Western blot, until ordered
by the department's inspector general. Now the department will use both IHC
and Western blot when rapid tests indicate the presence of the disease,
Johanns said.

"I want to make sure we continue to give consumers every reason to be
confident in the health of our cattle herd," Johanns said. "By adding the
second confirmatory test, we boost that confidence and bring our testing in
line with the evolving worldwide trend," the secretary said.

(byline: Libby Quaid)

--
ProMED-mail
<[e-mail]>

BSE, bovine - USA (05): susp. 20050614.1664
BSE, bovine - USA (04): susp. 20050613.1657
BSE, bovine - USA (03): susp. 20050612.1637
BSE, bovine - USA: susp. (02): tests 20050611.1626
BSE, bovine - USA: susp. 20050611.1625]

......................mhj/sh


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[burrowowl]

1. People should read

MadCowboy and do you remember a few years ago when Oprah talked about it and there was a trial?

[kestrel91316]

2. I have a question.................

why, if the conflicting tests were in November, did they only in JUNE decide to run the Western Blot??? I would have run it the next day, but WTF do I know. I am just a veterinarian.

[warrens]

3. This has become a political issue

I'm a reporter who covers this issue. USDA was trying to cover up this case. They knew it was positive. And they knew it was native. This would have been bad for negotiations with Japan and it was discovered just before the election. So they ordered the IHC test, which is extremely subjective, in that two scientists could look at the same results and have different opinions, and then lied. On the night that they were supposed to get the results, I called at least five times. I was told, there are no results yet. The last call, I heard all hell breaking loose in the background (USDA has extremely old-fashioned phones) so I knew they had the results. A few minutes later, they put out a release saying they had not received results and they would get it on Tuesday. On Tuesday, they announced the negative results, then said they had received the results on Monday and had sent them back out for confirmation. This is, of course, a lie. They got a positive and ordered the lab to find a negative, which with the IHC is easy enough. You can go to USDA.gov and search back and see the releases.

Two weeks ago, I asked Johanns, and there is film of this from Fuji TV and CNN, why they refused to use the Western blot test, which is accepted as the final word if there is a conflict among other tests. He said, there are TWO gold standards, and we chose IHC.

There are two problems with that answer. The first is, they have always claimed, ever since the Western blot confirmed the case in December of 2003, that only the very subjective IHC test is "gold standard," which is a nonsense term in any case. There is no such thing as "gold standard" in science. The other is that he knew damn well they were using the Western blot as he spoke. There is no excuse for not saying, well, as a matter of fact, we have listened to critics like you and are using the Western blot right now, Happy?

Instead, he hoped it would all be negative so he could later say, yeah, we used it, but all it did was back up our Gold Standard.

That cow, which was born in Texas and has no link to the bad feed that affected the other cases, undercuts all their bogus science. The feed ban is a hoax (they allow plate waste, chicken litter (chickens are fed with all the parts of the cow that are banned from cattle feed), and cattle blood in cattle feed. Slaughterhouses make a bundle on the blood and the cost of destroying spines and brains and stuff is high, using it for chicken feed is profitable. Of course, many farms have chickens AND cattle, and there is no way to stop the cattle from chomping on some chicken feed. Then the chicken poop is ground up and fed to cattle. It takes 600 degrees to destroy a prion; somehow, I think it is slightly less warm in a chicken't gullet. When I ask, they say, there is no evidence that a prion can survive a chicken's digestive system. So I ask, have you studied this? They say, next question.

I don't think mad cow is a real threat to my life, or my child's life. I think lying about science IS, though. If they will lie about this, they will lie about anything. Arsenic in water, global warming, free range grazing, name it. These nazis will rewrite any science if it will make their donors some money. Then scream that they are using "best science" and FUCK YOU. Johanns had to admit yesterday that their testing protocols were wrong, just like he had to admit in February that their allowing meat from old cattle in, while banning cattle under 30 months into the country live, made no sense.

These guys get told to jump by the White House and they ask, HOW HIGH?

Johanns was looking right at me when I asked that Western blot question, and if rapid blinking is a sign of lying, he was blinking rapidly. His answer was a total shift in policy, and a lie at the same time.

Again, I don't think mad cow is a significant theat, per se. Lying about it and covering it up, though, allows the disease to amplify. That means, you can get a few prions from bad meat, and you will probably not get the disease. But if you get highly infected meat, the odds go WAY up. Eating an infected brain means almost certainty you will get the disease. Eating infected hamburger can vary from 1 percent to 50 percent.

I eat steak nearly every day. It doesn't worry me, any more than crossing the street does. But lying about science REALLY worries me, because what will they lie about next?

[warrens]

4. Taiwan just banned U.S. beef again

They just started allowing it in again in May.