BSE origin confirmed

[rodb]

Pandiana
The US ban on ruminant to ruminant was after ours. Hope this helps.

[rsomer]

pandiana: The Canadian Ruminant Ingredient Feed Ban (Health of Animals Act) banned the feeding of ruminant protein effective August 4, 1997. The U.S. banned feeding ruminant protein on the same day August 1997 except the US allowed the use of products believed to pose a minimal risk of BSE transmission. These products included blood, blood products, gelatin, milk, milk products, protein derived solely from swine and equine sources, and inspected meat products which have been offered for human food and further heat processed for food, such as plate waste from restaurants and other institutions. The U.S issued a full ban on December 2000.

On December 7, 2000, APHIS prohibited all imports of rendered animal protein products from Europe, regardless of species. In December 2000, the CFIA suspended the importation of rendered animal material of any species from any country that Canada does not recognize as free of BSE. Before these dates ruminant protein from Europe could be imported but it was not to be used in rations for ruminants.

See: http://www.inspection.gc.ca/english/anima/feebet/rumin/ruminbge.shtml

I believe there was a Washington feed plant found guilty and fined for including ruminant protein in its feed materials in June of this year. I have not been able to find a link to verify this. The USDA claims to have 99% compliance with its feed ban.

[cowman]

Rod: When you consider that the cow was slaughtered on Dec. 9 and they finally announced she had BSE on the 23rd, maybe they weren't all that slack with the tag issue? Consider how long it took before we even got our BSE cow tested, about 4 months or something? I am sort of disgusted with the suggestion that the Americans just cut out and toss away our Canadian ID tags! Haven't our cattle associations explained to them what they are for? Do they have any concept of how a traceback works? Well I guess they will soon be learning! lol

[pandiana]

rsomer, thanks for the link. I noted that Canada also allows feeding of some ruminant material as seen in the excerpt from the above link.

Which animal proteins are exempt from the feed ban and can be fed to ruminants?

Pure porcine and equine proteins.
Poultry and fish proteins.
Milk, blood, and gelatin, and non-protein animal products such as rendered animal fats (e.g. beef tallow, lard, poultry fat).
I must admit that this makes me nervous. What do they know about milk protein or protein contaminants in other material?

[cowman]

Pandianna: Do you ever get the feeling that meat production is sort of unsafe when we are feeding all this garbage to our animals? I mean pig guts, chicken guts, fish guts? How much of this garbage contains antibiotics, mercury etc.? Now I assume our "experts have considered all the consequences and have come to the conclusion that all is well and these practices are safe? Maybe sort of like it was safe to feed old cows to other cows a few years back?
The more I hear about modern science and modern "experts" the more leery I get about all our food! When I hear things like the post on pinkeye where Muttley said his vet told him to be careful about feeding recently sprayed crops, I start to wonder what in the hell are we doing? I mean my neighbor sprayed his wheat pre-emergence, once for broad leafed weeds and once pre-harvest! Then combined it about ten days later. Apparently it went #1 and will enter the human food chain...so the vet says don't feed recently sprayed feed to your cattle because it is detrimental to their health...but it is okay to feed it to humans?
The more I consider these things the better organic looks to me?

[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?