Mad Cow Disease Reported in Alberta

[stevek]

Well, carebear, you aren't the only redneck still out there. IF the tagging system will work like they want, then, maybe they should help subsidize it. We don't really mind using them, they just aren't as good quality as the Z tags we had gotten used to. BUT, we use them anyway. If the cattle industry really is BIG business to the government, let's all say maybe they should throw in a little to keep it BIG.

[cakadu]

Carebear - I think your comments are quite valid. It cannot be the producer that always pays to have systems running. They benefit everyone, so everyone SHOULD be contributing.

I've made this argument many times and will continue to make it - if we are about providing the safest food possible not only domestically, but globally as well, then it becomes a social issue and producers should not be the only ones who pay for such a system.

We've all heard about how it only costs the producer 5% and the consumer just pennies. If you start adding up all these 5% that it costs the producer, then it doesn't take long to use up those already slim margins with just those extra percentages that don't cost producers much.

Maybe this is going to help us see that we cannot depend so exclusively on one market for all of our product. It may also help us to see that perhaps we shouldn't be so worried about the global market and concern ourselves with providing ourselves with a safe food supply domestically.

Things to ponder.

[ValueChainFX]

Care ... steve and cakadu you are all seeing the picture and valid input for sure. I can only imagine the challenges someone would have trying to trace back something from a manifest!!! YIKES! Handled my share of those and it sure leaves something to be desired!

The cost the producer pays now, should be spread across the supply chain, but if they pay a cost (in the tags for instance) they should see some return. The mandate of the tag system is to keep that information protected. What we are suggesting is that as a producer group, we would like to supply the tags for CCIA and our members can opt into the trace back system and the industry information system. What this means is we can collect information and put it into a form the producer can use to help them with business choices.

Rather than allow the government, processors or marketers make our choices. We suggest they can participate in the programs and share the costs. Much of this information is good for them as well.

Anyway the solutions are what we are all looking for.

[rsawchuk]

Here is some good news:

Research opens door to mad cow vaccine

Brad Evenson
CanWest News Service
Toronto, June 2, 2003

Canadian scientists have discovered a molecular target on the rogue protein linked to mad cow disease. This raises the hope that a cattle vaccine could be developed to eradicate the disease from the food supply.

The finding could give rise to a blood test for BSE - bovine spongiform encephalopathy - preventing the mass slaughter of cows of the kind needed in the current investigation of the mad cow outbreak in Alberta. In the future, it might also be used to treat human brain diseases.

"Surprisingly, it seems to work for every prion infection (of which mad cow is one) that we've tested," says senior scientist Neil Cashman, a professor of medicine at the University of Toronto.

The discovery was published today in the journal of Nature Medicine.

Mad cow is one of several brain diseases caused, experts believe, by "misfolded" versions of normal proteins called prions. Others include kuru and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in humans, chronic wasting disease in deer and elk, and scrapie in sheep.

Ordinarily, the immune system makes antibodies that attack foreign particles, but prions build up undetected in infected animals and humans.

Since their discovery in 1982 by U.S. scientist Stanley Prusiner, who won the Nobel Prize for his achievement, researchers have been searching in vain for ways to detect and destroy prions that cause the various diseases.

"For prion diseases, animals and humans do not raise anti-bodies, so we can't test for exposure to prions by measuring anti-bodies in the blood against prions," Cashman said.

To find a target, Cashman and his team used biophysical techniques to bend normal proteins and expose a normally hidden amino acid. Then they created antibodies that locked onto this acid known as "tyr-tyr-arg."

"They took advantage of that shape change by finding a particular portion of the molecule that became exposed when it normally isn't," said Byron Caughey, a senior scientist at the Laboratory for Persistent Viral Diseases at the U.S. National Institutes of Health.

"This opens up many possibilities for diagnostic tests, for potential the****utic strategies, and also provides us with a very nice set of tools for researchers to use to try and figure out the molecular basis of these diseases."

Together with its partner, Montreal-based Caprion Pharmaceuticals, the University of Toronto team has created a vacccine that would stimulate a cow's immune system to make antibodies against prions. It could be ready for testing within a year. The molecular target could also be used in other vaccines.

"It works for BSE, it works for scrapie, it works for humans with classical and variant CJD, it works for chronic wasting disease, it works for several othr experimental models for prion infection," says Cashman.

The antibodies could also be used to attack prions in people with Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, which could lead to pressure on Caprion to release the product for testing in people with the incurable, fatal brain disease.

In the short term, the discovery could lead to a more efficient test for mad cow disease. Since one cow was diagnosed with the disease, over 1,000 animals across western Canada have been slaughtered to have their brains examined, the only way to detect which animals were infected.

"In the best of all possible worlds, we would be able to detect prions in the blood or the urine or some other, easily accessible tissue or fluid as opposed to killing the animals and testing the brain," Cashman said.