BSE origin confirmed

[rodb]

Cowman
Their time to test was probably as good as it gets considering the technology being used. However that cow was in the Human food chain compared to where ours was tanked so the urgency may have been different. What I marveled at was the fact that they would of had the head and I assume at some point the ears that held the tags, that they found two weeks later.

[cowman]

Well Rod, you are right. A condemned cow doesn't require the emergency that one going into the food chain does. Hopefully that sort of thing won't happen again and that both countries will adopt a wait and hold policy on any downer cows. They have a big PR job ahead of them.
Perhaps now we can start to work together. From what I have heard their food safety people and ours are basically on the same page on this one. Now if we can just keep the politicians and media from meddling and let our scientists and theirs solve this thing, we might come out of it with a solution. Right now we have to put our faith in our food safety professionals and hope they get it right. Personally I have been very impressed with Brian Evans. He comes across as very professional and as a man of the utmost integrity. And I was also impressed with the American head vet.

[kato]

I was also impressed with Dr. Evans. Just think how great it would be if our government had a few more like him. Especially if they were Ministers (Prime or otherwise)

[rsomer]

For myself I am not that impressed with the vets in the USDA. In Monday’s briefing, the USDA head vet says "Yesterday I personally telephoned the owner of this herd where the positive animal was located primarily to thank him for his cooperation thus far in this effort. However, during that discussion he indicated that he has conducted an extensive search of his records and located original documents that would indicate that the cow in question, this positive animal, was indeed an older animal when he purchased her in 2001." http://www.usda.gov/news/releases/2003/12/0447.htm
Is that how the USDA is conducting this investigation? They just ask the owner who shipped the downer cow to the U.S. plant? That is absolutely unbelievable. That has no credibility whatsoever. The cow that was 4½ years old is now 6½ years old? Either the owner of the herd was lying at the time he shipped the cow in order to get a better price for a younger animal or he is lying now. Either way you don’t take his word for it. You don’t find out the age of the BSE cow by phoning up the owner of the herd and having a chat.
I think Canadian producers are very skeptical about whether or not the U.S. BSE positive was really a Canadian cow or not. A nation that would lie to the entire world about Iraq having weapons of mass destruction would not hesitate to lie about the origin of a cow with BSE. Even though the USDA head vet may come across on TV and radio as having credibility that credibility has not carried across to the investigation into the U.S. case of BSE.
The herd the downer cow came from has not been depopulated and tested for BSE. Why not? The USDA has not depopulated the previous herd where the cow came from like Canada did. Why not? The entire focus of the USDA investigation has been to prove the animal came from Canada, not to prove that this was an isolated case or that BSE is not wide spread in the United States or even that the positive cow did not become infected with BSE while in the United States.
The USDA investigation has no credibility. None whatsoever. You can fool some of the people some of the time but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time. Canadian producers and the people of the world should not be fooled into thinking that this is a Canadian problem.

[cowman]

Well in a few days the DNA test will get to the bottom of this whole deal. But somehow I suspect they have it right. They interviewed the American vet(by phone) on the Rutherford show yesterday and I thought he came across as very credible. I'm not sure if they are going to put down that dairy herd or not. Maybe they are waiting to see just where the investigation takes them or maybe it is hard to find a plant where they can get 4000 head slaughtered on short notice?
The main point should be that it doesn't really matter where this cow came from. It is a North American problem. Feed additives move back and forth across the border as did cattle.
The focus now needs to be on tracing the cow and containing the problem. I suspect it can be worked out if the politicians and media don't use this for their own nefarious purposes?

[jensend]

it may very well be that the cow was born in canada but dr. ron is doing his best to make people suspicious of american methods and motives. his credibility is slipping and that is making for animosity. everything is just too neat and tidy. the test is positive and nothing has been said about an eartag but suddenly he is running around like the kid who found the nickel in the cake and saying look what i found. yesterday he makes a social call to the dairy owner in washington and a key piece of evidence comes out in passing. lucky ron! the cow was culled for calving difficulties so was she showing sumptoms of bse - apparently not so how advanced wasit? this could provide some evidence as to where she contracted the disease. dr. ron has a lot of questions to answer and the way this has been handled so far some of those answers might be kind of tough to present in the right light. i think this will end up being a poor investigation. their biggest concern should be to find the other animals from the same dairy in alberta and test them to see if this was a one-off or there was a feed problem in alberta. if they don't look for those animals for testing i think they have lost all credibility as far as the 'science' goes. the americans want this one to go away quickly but they have a tiger by the tail and the japanese will not let them off the hook easily. my two cents worth.

[cowman]

Now the way I heard it was the American vet talked to the Washington farmer and to the Alberta farmer who sold the cow, and they both agreed that this was the cow? Was that info wrong?
I believe there were 7 other cows/heifers from this same farm that were sold to the States at that time? And the Americans are hot on the trail of the other 7. They are trying to trace down where the meat from this cow went in 8 states and Guam.
But once again I think the DNA test will be the final word on this question of where she came from. I can't believe the head vet would try to cover up a disease like this or that all the health professionals in the US are in on some vast conspiracy.
If it is proved that the cow came from Alberta then we need to deal with that. It doesn't alter the fact that WE(Canada and the US) have a problem and we need to get it cleaned up?

[ALICIA]

If cows get the BSE from eating contaminated food then way is it so importend to find out where she was born. I would think it would be beter to find out how long she had the BSE and trace the food she has been eating. After all they have proved that its not genetic have they not.
I guess they still do not know nother about the BSE and are just making a big show, we are doing this and that but really not doing any thing but the same old thing.

[cowman]

I think Alicia that BSE takes about three years to incubate so it is pretty important to find out where she was born and spent the first few months of her life eating the infected feed? I heard now the Canadian and American authorities are looking at one particular feedmill that may have a link to both the Angus cow and the Holstein. It will be interesting to see if the mill has a record of where they bought the feeder stock for their supplements in 1997? Shouldn't be too hard as they probably keep the records for tax purposes? I believe Revenue Canada requires that for at least 5 years or so?
You do raise a good point about whether this disease can be passed down to an animals offspring. I'm not up on it enough to tell you but there must be something to it if they go in and slaughter whole herds just because an offspring is sold into them? Maybe someone who understands this could enlighten us?

[rodb]

Cowman

The renderer was on the radio defending their product saying that if it was from product that they produced it would have to be contaminated inputs.

[cowman]

Rod: Well at the time I didn't know it was a renderer. Now when he says it must have been contaminated inputs what is he talking about? Doesn't a renderer only use animals for inputs!! So is he saying the "input" was probably a cow from fairly close? I doubt they haul dead cows from Montana just to get them rendered? I know they haul guts and bones from packing houses a fair distance at times but I doubt from the states.

[rodb]

Happy New Year Cowman
He was implying that if it came from their facility they had to have rendered something that had BSE or someother Prion disease.

What gets me in all of this is who is feeding all these wild deer and elk that have CWD? If these prion diseases are only caused by feeding of prion contaminated feeds, why do elk and deer get it in the wild, why have sheep had scrapies for at least the last three hundred years that we know of. There has to be another causal agent that we are missing. It probably can be triggered by feeding prion laced material but what caused it to start in the first place?

[rsomer]

Chronic wasting disease was first noticed in 1967 in mule deer at the Foothills Research Station at Fort Collins, Colorado. The project involving fiber digestion in captive mule deer during harsh winter conditions was conducted at Colorado State University.
In that study 30-40 sheep were penned with 40-50 mule deer. Although they showed no clinical symptoms at the time some of these sheep came from a scrapies research project. There is circumstantial evidence to suggest that some sheep could have been infected with Scrapies and physically been in the early stages of the disease development. It is suggested that the mule deer ate placenta of scrapies infected sheep.
Over the next 10 years, researchers worked to understand the origin and causes of the affliction, but their studies led to more questions than answers. One thing was certain, the disease was deadly. Between 1974 and 1979, 66 mule deer and one black-tailed deer were held captive in Colorado and Wyoming research corrals. Of those, 57 contracted the strange disease and not one survived.
Sheep have been recognized to have scrapies for over two centuries. Although a prion disease like BSE, scrapies has never been linked to illness in humans.

See: www-nehc.med.navy.mil/nepmu2/ Chronic%20Wasting%20Disease%20Draft.doc

[topper]

Rsomer: you bring up one point in your post that has bothered me for a while. The official story is that BSE can only be passed by feeding infected feed to other animals, but it seems to me that if there are some infected cows in our herds it could be passed along by cows eating the placenta of one of these cows. All cattle producers I'm sure have seen an old cow helping out another clean up the mess after calving.I wonder if there has been any research on this possible means of transmission?

[grassfarmer]

Interesting, I've never heard of placenta being involved in the transfer of BSE or CWD. If the placenta contained the BSE wouldn't the calf get it automatically?
One thing I've never seen after running large numbers of cattle and sheep together is an animal eating the placenta of another species.