Why test?

[per]

Public perseption perhaps.

Two deaths in Castilla y León confirmed to be from Mad Cow disease

By h.b. - Apr 7, 2008 - 3:25 PM


The two youngsters have not been named and they are thought to have eaten
infected meat some eight years ago

The death of two youngsters in Castilla y León has been confirmed today to
have been caused by Creutzfeld-Jakob, Mad Cow disease. Experts in Spain now
consider that more cases are likely to be detected here over the next few
months.

Juan José Badiola director of the centre which investigates the disease in
Spain has called for calm. He said that both the victim probably ate the
infected meat more than eight years ago.
The deaths follow that of a 26 year old woman in Madrid back in 2005.

The exact localities of the new deaths has not been revealed, but the
Castilla y León health department say that one death was a month ago and the
other some time earlier. Neither of those to die was a farmer.

http://www.typicallyspanish.com/news/publish/article_15942.shtml


April 7, 2008 - 1:35 PM Two die in Spain from human form of mad cow
disease
MADRID (Reuters) - Two people have died in Spain from variant
Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease, the human form of mad cow disease, the health
department at the regional Castilla-Leon government said on Monday.

Mad cow disease, bovine spongiform encephalopathy, first emerged in Britain
in the 1980s and has been found in herds in several European and other
countries. Scientists believe it is transmitted through infected meat and
bone meal fed to cattle and may cause vCJD in humans.

The health department said these were not the first vCJD deaths in Spain but
did not give details.


http://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/news/international/Two_die_in_Spain_from_human_form_of_mad_cow_diseas e.html?siteSect=143&sid=8942541&cKey=1207575501000 &ty=ti


TSS

[farmers_son]

Food safety is acheived through removal of SRMs, not testing.

Please check out:
Annual incidence rate* of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) in OIE Member Countries that have reported cases, excluding the United Kingdom
http://www.oie.int/eng/info/en_esbincidence.htm


The incidence rate of BSE in Canada was calculated to be .145 per million bovines over 24 months, the second lowest rate of BSE in any country with a known positive, after the U.S. The incidence of BSE in Spain is 27.761 per million bovines or over 191 times higher. The situation in Great Britain was much, much worse that that. In the worst year, 1992, there were 37,280 BSE positive cases. That has dropped dramatically to a point where in 2007 there were 67 positives.

See:
http://www.oie.int/eng/info/en_esbru.htm

Canada’s BSE protocols are based upon the OIE recommendations plus the recommendations of the International Scientific Panel that did a study of our BSE status in 2003. Presently the OIE recognizes Canada and the United States to be “Controlled Risk” for BSE.

It is truly unfortunate these two people have died. They may not have died from nvCJD, Spain has made announcements like this before and then later retracted them.

The reality is the common cold can cause deaths. According to the Center for Disease Control (CDC) 10 people died in the United States from the common cold in 2007. There were no cases of this cold in Canada, yet we kept the border open.

See:
Mutated cold virus kills 10 in U.S., reports CDC
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20071115/cold_virus_071115/20071116?hub=Health

[per]

That doesn't address public perception. Science is science, perception is reality.

[farmers_son]

Science is science and perception is perception. And everyones perception may be different. Some people have the perception the world is flat and to them they are right. There is no test that will convince them different.

You may be interested in this site:

Role Of Science In Knowledge Creation:
A Philosophy Of Science Perspective

http://www.kmbook.com/science.htm

I thought it was an interesting read.

"The Role Of Science In Knowledge Creation

Hunt (1991, p. 17-18) argued that the major purpose of science is to develop laws and theories to explain, predict, understand, and control phenomena. He suggested that a science must have a distinct subject matter, a set of phenomena which serves as a focal point for investigation. The discovery of the underlying uniformities among these phenomena yields empirical regularities, lawlike generalizations, laws, principles, and theories. Through this process, science aims to produce knowledge of the world by establishment of generalizations governing the behavior of the world (Chalmers, 1990). How does this process relate to the "scientific method"? We explain this in the following discussion.

The Scientific Method

The word science has its origins in the Latin verb scire, meaning "to know." Although, one can "know" through tenacity, authority, faith, intuition, or science, the method of science [or the "scientific method"] is distinct in its notion of intersubjective certification. In other words, it should be possible for other investigators to ascertain the truth content of scientific explanation(s). "Scientific knowledge thus rests on the bedrock of empirical testability" (Hunt, 1991: p. 197). Empirical replication depends on a comparison of "objective" observations of different researchers studying the phenomenon.

Science And Objectivity

All observation is potentially contaminated, whether by our theories or our worldview or our past experiences, but we should deny the conclusion that science cannot, therefore, objectively choose from among rival theories on the basis of empirical testing. Obviously, if objectivity requires that the choice between rival theories be made with certainty (no possibility of error), then science is not objective. In science, all knowledge claims are tentative, subject to revision on the basis of new evidence. Although science cannot provide one with hundred percent certainty, yet it is the most, if not the only, objective mode of pursuing knowledge (Hunt, 1991: p, 200-201). This pursuit is dependent upon the imagination as well as critical and analytical skills of the scientist. It is generally believed that the goal of the pursuit is the discovery of truth.

Science And Truth

Two conceptions of science embody two different valuations of scientific life and of the purpose of scientific enquiry. According to the first conception, science is above all else an imaginative and exploratory activity, and the scientist is a person taking part in a great intellectual adventure. The alternative conception suggests that science is above all else a critical and analytical activity and the scientist is pre-eminently a person who requires evidence before he or she delivers an opinion, and when it comes to evidence is hard to please (Medawar, 1991: p. 30-31).

In the first conception, truth takes shape in the mind of the observer: it is his imaginative grasp of what might be true that provides the incentive for finding out, so far as he can, what is true. This viewpoint is supported by other scholars of science. For instance, Greenwald, et al. (1986) argue that: "One's preliminary hypotheses have a decided advantage in the judgement process."

According to the second conception, truth resides in nature and is to be got at only through the evidence of the senses: apprehension leads by a direct pathway to comprehension, and the scientist's task is essentially one of discernment (Medawar, 1991: p. 30-31).

Inasmuch as these two sets of opinions contradict each other flatly in every particular, it seems hardly possible that they should both be true; but anyone who has actually done or reflected deeply upon scientific research knows that there is in fact a great deal of truth in both of them. For a scientist must indeed be freely imaginative and yet skeptical, creative and yet a critic. What are usually thought of as two alternative and indeed competing accounts of the two successive and complementary episodes of thought that occur in every advance of scientific understanding. This general conception of science which reconciles the two sets of contradictory opinions is sometimes called the 'hypothetico-deductive' conception (Medawar, 1991: p. 32-33, p. 231; Popper, 1959).

Besides these two accounts of the purpose of scientific inquiry, there are two other [mutually competing] conceptions that provide direction to the process of scientific inquiry: consensual view of science and the dissension view of science.

Science As Consensus

According to this approach, scientific knowledge is the product of a collective human enterprise to which scientists make individual contributions which are purified and extended by mutual criticism and intellectual cooperation. According to this theory the goal of science is a consensus of rational opinion over the widest possible field (Ziman, 1967). The two concepts of consensibility and consensuality need to be differentiated for understanding of this goal.

Scientific knowledge is distinguished from other intellectual artefacts of human society by the fact that its contents are consensible. This implies that each message should not be so obscure or ambiguous that the recipient is unable either to give it whole-hearted assent or to offer well-founded objections. The goal of science, moreover, is to achieve the maximum degree of consensuality. Ideally the general body of scientific knowledge should consist of facts and principles that are firmly established and accepted without serious doubt, by an overwhelming majority of competent, well-informed scientists. A consensible message is one which has the potentiality for eventually contributing to a consensus, and a consensual statement is one which has been fully tested and is universally agreed. We may say, indeed, that consensibility is a necessary condition for any scientific communication, whereas only a small proportion of the whole body of science is undeniably consensual at a given moment (Ziman, 1978)"

[per]

Very interesting read farmers_son. The reality is though that what people perceive they believe. The science of prion transmission and the link between vCJd and BSE is still based on theory. But taking that for fact it still depends on proper removal of the SRMs and no mix ups. Unfortunately that old human factor comes in there and mix ups happen. A big kerfuffle in the US right now about some tonsils left in some heads that were distributed. The headlines are SRMs left in the meat. That is why perception is so important. Call it perception or reality but what the public perceives is real to them. If those heads had been BSE tested then the recipient could have eaten tonsil sandwiches in confidence.

[farmers_son]

There was a time when people perceived the sun revolved around the earth, that does not make it so. A lot of the BSE problem stemmed from media creating peoples perceptions for them. The reality is the risk of dying from nvCJD was blown out of all proportions and even though we are all going to die someday it is most probably not from eating BSE infected tonsils or any other part of the animal, especially if the cow came from Canada which I would dare say has the safest beef in the world.

Peoples perceptions about eating beef, or put another way the consumers confidence in our beef product, remained high throughout the BSE crisis. I would have to say the protocols that were put in place were accepted as providing the necessary safeguards. The incidence of BSE in North America is not the same as in Britain and as a result the steps that need to be taken to protect the food supply are different. Even then, the epidemic of nvCJD that was predicted as a result of the very serious BSE situation that existed in Britain before there were any safeguards in place never happened. If we were to believe the media people should have been dropping like flies. With time, people do change their perceptions as they are provided more factual information.

[jensend]

there was a time when people thought, or at least hoped, the strategy that's been followed for the last five years would work and the canadian cattle industry would be able to recovery reasonable quickly. that 'knowledge' has also proven to be false. i would suggest that to pretend things are going well indicates farmers_son is the one having trouble separating perception from reality.

[farmers_son]

Actually the Canadian cattle industry did recover quite quickly. The border is open and we are exporting cows, bulls, calves to the U.S. We can't blame everything on BSE. If our dollar was 63 cents today a cull cow would be worth 76 cents a pound. A 600 pound calf would be worth $950 dollars and if barley was $2.00 a bushel that weaned calf would be worth $200 more. The U.S. energy policy was not based in any way on BSE and the sub prime mortgage in the U.S. had nothing to do with BSE either.

Further to my post that the media blew the risk of nvCJD all out of proportion I found a link to todays Telegraph, a British paper that says the maximum number that might be expected to die of nvCJD has been revised from the original estimates of 100,000 to 500 (which I think is still probably quite high). To date 129 people in Britain have died from nvCJD even though Britain has had BSE for over 20 years and for much of that time there were absolutely no safequards in place, no removal of SRMs or anything.

See:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2003/05/07/nbse07.xml

[per]

Just to keep us all honest.

"Men who have excessive faith in their theories or ideas are not only ill prepared for making discoveries; they also make very poor observations. Of necessity, they observe with a preconceived idea, and when they devise an experiment, they can see, in its results, only a confirmation of their theory. In this way they distort observation and often neglect very important facts because they do not further their aim... But it happens further quite naturally that men who believe too firmly in their theories, do not believe enough in the theories of others. So the dominant idea of these despisers of their fellows is to find others' theories faulty and to try to contradict them. The difficulty, for science, is still the same.

Claude Bernard
An Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine, 1865.

Somehow f_s you seem to believe the BSE thing has gone past us. Say what you want about all the other obstacles facing us there might still be markets that would buy tested meat. It is a mute point if we don't try. The status quo has led us ill prepared to face the new set of obstacles.

[rkaiser]

Great thread guys. Lots of Yin Yang in all of the articles. The idea that testing is not scientific has not come up however, and to my understanding the tests being used were constructed by scientists. Do you think that the proposed testing methods of companies wanting to reach new markets for our beef would be throwing the heads out to the dogs and seeing which ones came down with vdogCJD farmers_son?

[Willowcreek]

Apparently the Japanese mind perceives that both testing and SRM removal are required- and don't follow the drumbeat of the science put forward by the lobbyiest influenced O.I.E....

We could easily be still arguing perception and reality 10 years from now- while Japan continues to buy its beef from Australia/NZ and not Canada or the States.....

[rkaiser]

Listen Willow creek -- the only perception vs. reality here in Canada is the reality of science behind testing vs. the perception of ABP/CCA.

That perception is that if we test we will risk finding more positives, piss off Uncle Sam, and possibly I said possibly, cause every company to test and the cost would need to be born by the producer.

Those excuses, my friend, are ABP/CCA perception. For ABP/CCA to say they are siding with science is insane.

[per]

It appears to be that this conversation has been taking place for longer than we have been around.

"In sciences that are base on supposition and opinion...the object is to command assent, not master the thing itself."

Francis Bacon 1620

[Willowcreek]

Your ABP/CCA must have the same Kool-Aide supplier as the NCBA has!!!!

Or they are all in the same multinational Packers pockets!!!

[Kathy]

Why test? Which test? Who owns the test will determine when we test! Right now, Canada (ie: government of Canada) has no test of its own, and until they do, they are not likely to let Canadian ranchers test.

The BIO-RAD TSE test kit was developed by the CEA "Commission Energie Atomique" of France. According to BioRads site, they co-developed this test procedure. However, I read somewhere that CEA developed it and sold the rights to Bio-Rad in California, for North American.

Bio-Rad link: http://www.bio-rad.com/B2B/BioRad/product/br_category.jsp?BV_SessionID=@@@@1802450438.120880 1460@@@@&BV_EngineID=ccccadedlkjehkhcfngcfkmdhkkdf ll.0&categoryPath=/Catalogs/Food%20|%20Animal%20|%20Environment%20Testing/TSE%20Testing&divName=Food%20|%20Animal%20|%20Envi ronment%20Testing&language=English&country=HQ

"Scientific Collaboration With the CEA (Commissariat à l’Energie Atomique — France)
Through our scientific collaboration with CEA’s scientists, Bio-Rad has developed original high-performance assays to diagnose TSE in infected animals. This original approach has allowed Bio-Rad to continually propose suitable solutions to the new challenges that arise in the BSE crisis."

BIO-RAD is the french version for the terminology "Radiation Biology". Start thinking:

Chernobyl fallout April 26, 1986 -
nuclear weapons and bomb testing -
uranium mining and environmental contamination - depleted uranium nanoparticles

www.markpurdey.com www.purdeyenvironment.com

Read some of Mark's articles on how CWD originated out of two USA military facilities (White Sands Missile Range, NM and Fort Collins, CO).

The BSE TheoryThe White Sands Missile Range is an extensive spread of US military ..... roaming the same Front Range foothills around Fort Collins where CWD is so rife. ...
www.markpurdey.com/the_bse_theory.htm