Some Facts On Mad Cow Disease or BSE - Morris W. Dorosh

[bobn]

Incompetent Civil Servants are wrecking agriculture again! Sowing unfounded suspicion that Canadian cattlemen could have been illegally using bovine meat meals in farm-mixed feed for cattle, is nothing short of sabotage to the industry.

B A C K G R O U N D E R / Morris W. Dorosh

It doesn't sound like anybody at the Canadian Food Inspection Agency has been reading AGRIWEEK much lately. Otherwise the mad-cow crises could not have been so grossly mishandled. They must be reading comic books.

A high official of the agency appeared on CBC television the other day looking confused and befuddled, with no sign that he is in the middle of an emergency. The same languid attitude seemed to pervade the whole establishment, with vague, vacant assurances as to health and safety. There was none of the impression that, yes, this is a disaster but we are up to the challenge, we have the resources and have a handle on it. Drastic events call for drastic responses and this is what we are doing.

This is not an animal or human health or food safety issue. It is not even so much a trade or economic issue. It is a public image issue in which poorly-informed people at home and abroad have to be impressed and reassured.

There were 1,900 head of cattle on the 17 farms that had been quarantined as of last week. This is what should have happened. On the same day that any possible connection was discovered, all the cattle on the farm should have been rounded up and destroyed. Kill now and ask questions later. TV cameras should have been called and would have taken close-ups of dreamy faces of cows about to be liquidated. The impression would have been sent around the world of decisive, aggressive, ruthless, all-stops-out responses in Canada. Government officials should have been on TV promising that they were prepared to kill all the cattle in Canada if that's what it took. Information given the media should have been decisive and precise, even on days when it was not possible to be precise. It should have looked like someone is in charge.

Destroying 1,900 cattle would have cost the government about as much in compensation as beef producers are losing every two days that the export embargo remains. It would have made no practical difference in terms of food safety; the chances of a person contracting a disease from a BSE cow are about the same as being killed by a falling meteor

Instead, some government official put out the preposterous notion that some Canadian cattlemen could have been illegally using bovine meat meals in farm-mixed feed for cattle, a practice outlawed in 1997. There is absolutely no reason to suspect that this was happening or in fact that it could happen. No farmer would buy expensive chicken and hog feed to feed to cattle. The thing about cattle is that they thrive, through the magic of the ruminant digestive system, on low-grade feeds. Very little protein supplement is fed to beef cattle because it is not needed and not effective. But Ottawa announced that 200 farms would be randomly checked to see if they were using illegal feed and to enquire into their other practices. It was a blame-the-farmer diversionary game by civil servants to deflect heat from themselves. The result is the impression that the problem could be vastly bigger than one sick cow and that it is rooted in sloppy production practices and lawbreaking by cattle produce.

Then there is that amazing delay in performing the test which first identified the disease. It is not even possible to imagine in what kind of disease-tracking system a sample would be left lying around for over three months before being tested. That was a gift to such as the Canada-hating, Canada-baiting Democratic senator from North Dakota Byron Dorgan, who will not rest until the last Canadian export to his country is stopped.

BSE has been identified in at least 26 countries, and the reason the number is only 26 is that effective testing has not been done elsewhere. There are 100 million head of cattle in the U,S. and since BSE turns up spontaneously in a certain percentage of cases, the statistical possibility that not even one America animal is infected is zero. Sooner or later it will be discovered and that might be the beginning of a more rational attitude to this disease. There is no issue of food safety here. Whether or not BSE can be transmitted to humans is a matter of medical controversy. If it can be transmitted, rudimentary precautions are sufficient to stop it. The worldwide mad-cow scare could not have happened but for the voodoo science that has become so fashionable and the relentless exertions of the media to thoroughly sensationalize everything it touches.

[Smithy]

Thanks for posting that. There were several points made that should have been clarified early on in this fiasco. One obvious one is that there is no logical motivation for a rancher to feed chicken feed to cows as it would be impractical as well as illegal.

[rain]

As well the liability to the feed manufacturer is to high in order to sneak meat meal into cattle feed. From what I have read I get the feeling that the media has farmers as stupid and feed manufactures as evil and sneaky.

[rain]

Stories like this one make you wonder what to think. Did the lady being interviewed actually say these things or did the interviewer get it al wrong?

This story would scare me away from buying products from a peson like Miss Biggs as it appears she is totally uninformed or just not to be trusted?

Mad cow crisis could be boon for family farm as market for grass-fed beef grows

OTTAWA (CP) - At least one farm business stands to profit from the scare over mad-cow disease: grass-fed beef.
Colleen Biggs, who offers grass-fed beef from a ranch near Hanna, Alta., said she's been getting a lot of calls since bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) was discovered in an Alberta cow last month. Even before the scare, business at TK Ranch Natural Foods was increasing by 25 to 30 per cent annually, Biggs said. It's a niche market, but it's growing - especially in Alberta, home to Canada's biggest cattle industry.

Biggs attributes the rising sales to concern about practices in industrial beef production, particularly the use of meat byproducts in cattle feed.

"We've certainly had a lot of interest," said Biggs. "I think more and more people are becoming aware of what is going on in the industry."

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Biggs says many consumers are willing to pay a premium for grass-fed beef, largely due to concern about animal byproducts in feed. Her products are priced 25 to 30 per cent higher than those generally found on supermarket shelves.

She said the mainstream industry uses animal byproducts because they're cheap and profit margins in the industry are so narrow.

The BSE outbreak in Britain was traced to the practice of feeding cattle byproducts back to cattle, which was then banned there and elsewhere.

But Canada and the United States, unlike Britain, still allow the use of cattle byproducts in feed for non-ruminant animals such as pigs and horses.

British scientists say they tried that approach, but kept getting new BSE cases because feed intended for pigs and horses wound up being eaten by cattle.

The British found that cross-contamination can occur between different production lines in feed mills, or as a result of carelessness on the part of farmers.


Ronnie Cummins, director the U.S. Organic Consumers Association, says consumers are increasingly skeptical of practices in the beef industry.

"No case of mad cow has ever been found in a cow raised on an organic farm," Cummins said.

"The major reason for that is that you can't feed slaughterhouse waste to an animal and call it organic."

He said it is hypocritical for the United States to ban Canadian beef after a single case of mad cow disease, when it tests only a tiny fraction of its own cattle for the disease.

Cummins maintains there must be cases of BSE in the United States but they haven't been detected and there is no interest in detecting them.

He predicted the NAFTA countries "will continue to go merrily along with an only partial feed ban that's not enforced . . . and no one wanting to look at this scary underside of industrial agriculture."

Biggs said organic products are good news for the family farm, because the profit margins are higher than in the industrial meat industry.

And Cummins sees old-fashioned grazing as the way of the future.

"From our standpoint it's very simple: the traditional way that meat was raised, which is nowadays called organic, is safe, its

humane, it's good for family farms."

"We can't have cheap industrial meat unless we want to have things like mad cow."

[ianben]

In UK we were feeding INFECTED bone meal to our cattle as we had big problem before it was ever diagnosed as BSE.

Where the original infection came from I think we are still to find out. Perhap there are rare cases naturally. The epidemic comes from feeding these INFECTED cattle back to cattle.
There are other factors involved also as not all cattle eating the same food get the same number of cases. Some herds can be devestated while others may not have a single case. Very few cases in beef herds here and some dairy herds did not have a case even when eating same food as one which had lots.
One theory is using AI we bred genetically suspetable animals. One guy estimated 9 bulls where responsible for 90% of dairy herd.

Following the spread of BSE in other countries the reaction always seems the same. Logic and perception of risk seem to fly out the window. Feeding your family beef will lead to a horrible death seems the only headline and what the public remembers.

I agree the way it should be handled is. Testing is working. One BSE animal has been removed from the food chain all other beef is safe.

I think US having a case will just be one more nail in the coffin of beef industry. Do you think their media will be any different? Ten time worse in my opinion. More vegis more people eating pork and chicken. There is no good news with BSE as no-one can say beef is 100% safe. 99.9 is just not good enough when it comes to ones families health.