more bse research

[jensend]

http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/state/article/0,1299,DRMN_21_2569718,00.html

take a deep breath before you read this one

[cowman]

That is wild scary stuff! Everyone who eats meat should read this article! Being a vegetarian is starting to look pretty good! I'm sure glad my two grandchildren are vegetarians!

[15444]

I think a few of our industry leaders spouses and children need to die from vCJD. Maybe then they will agree with the producers who keep telling them to quit thinking that feeding animals to animals is sane. Also might heighten the belief that every animal SHOULD be tested.

[ValueChainFX]

15444 you know what they say, lead, follow or get out of the way! Time for the producers to lead!

[grassfarmer]

Cowman "wild stuff" is right - wildly speculative stuff - just the kind of thing to feed media hysteria and not proven by sound science. Note in all the experiments they injected bse infected material into the brains of lab mice - this is the only way they have ever been able to transmit bse under experimental conditions. Every other feeding trial done in an attempt to prove/disprove the bse theory to my knowledge has failed. Until they start coming after me wielding a big syringe full of bse material I will continue to eat beef and beef products. Come on guys have some confidence in your product... the poultry guys don't constantly cheer each other up with stories of how unhealthy their product is and it is a lot dodgier than beef.

[ivbinconned]

"In short, behavior of the diseases has been unpredictable, making statements of certainty about them untenable"

This one quote from the artical puts all the speculation in it, into perspective for me.

We in North America buy more insurance than any other culture in the world. And canadians much more than our American cousins.

In our culture today we like to be scared...of something, anything! Be it Global warming, Y2K, unregestered guns, AIDS, Terrorists SARS, etc. When you think back on it, the media and the politcal talking heads etc are always whipping up fear on something or other. And with out them, they espouse, we would really be in trouble.
Poor David Suzuke was having to shovel some -16 out of his Global Warming Vancouver driveway last week.Do you think he will rethink his theories?

I had a couple of succesfull bussness people tell me last week that big feedlots were giving antibiotic shots to ALL animals every three days!! Where does this come from? Who is spreading this crap?

Do we have a predominance of PEDA (animal rights) sympathetic scientists in many of our labs today?? Where they can run tests today that were unheard of 5 years ago or 10 or 20??

Do the labs that publish what the animal rights pinko press love to hear, get the ink?

You notice that the attitude of people like Enough is...you freedom loving freenterprise cowboys should just suck it up, its your problem, I could care less.

And yet when it come to an issue that is dear to the hearts of bleeding heart Liberals it's suddenly all our problems...and the productive, wealth creative part of our economy must be taxed to save what ever it is that they want to save today.

Darn caffein...just had to get that out...maybe I will be a little more mello by the end of the week.

[bombay_43]

More caffein might just be what we all need! Everyone is so scared of saying what is on their minds for fear of saying the "politically incorrect" thing. There really are groups of people out there that would use "fear" to implement their way of thinking, into our general public.

I think most of what you said, needs to be said and heard by many more ears!

I am not scared of eating Alberta Beef and I have confidence, that it is one of the healthiest choices I could feed my family!

[cowman]

Well I just wish those darned left wing pinko liberals would save my sorry butt! Tax the people and send me some money so I can get my cows tested!
Whether the meat is safe or not is one question we need to know the answer to. We need to be able to assure our customer it is! So far, what we are doing is working, but the tide is turning. Whether we like it or not we are going to have a PR wreck on our hands. So what can we do?
Well we can continue like we have been and hope it all fades away or we can bite the bullet and make the moves to save our industry. I don't know how many of us can weather this wreck much longer? You can't lose money forever?

[pandiana]

I think cowman, we have to accept the fact that the answers to what causes BSE is, for this moment in time, "unknowable". There is no definitive proof that it is a feed problem or part feed, part environmental or non of the above. There is no way the research is going to catch up with the problem. We have to deal with what we know.

What we do know is:

We have it.

We have closed borders because of it, resulting in a backlog of livestock in the system and depressed calf prices in return resulting in depressed income for the entire livestock industry.

We are unable to process a significant portion of our production as it pertains to culls, again reducing income for primary producers.

We have, since this last outbreak, to deal with the prospect of holding back more calves for a longer period of time resulting in higher feed costs and feed shortages, again reducing income for producers and feedlots.

We have a growing and widespread neurosis when it comes to eating the fruits of our labor, which is spilling over to our other meat producing partners, albeit based on unsubstantiated information and an extremely low probability.

Dealing logically with what we know, the solution that best fits most of the above problems would be to test. At one point, I thought testing everything over 30 months. I am not sure now. Maybe everything over 20 months. I still have some trouble with testing everything when 'they' claim they have never been able to detect BSE in young animals. It seems like a waste. It would be interesting to see if Japan, with its higher incidence of BSE, has ever found a positive in a younger animal.

[pandiana]

I would never suggest that it isn't important to try to find answers to all medical problems. But articles like this tend to sensationalize a topic because it is current. It is also a good way to generate money for research. But we need perspective: 50,000 people die of Alzheimers in the US. Even if some of these cases (500 - 5000) could have been CJD, who will we blame the other 45,000 cases on. For a large part, we accept that people get sick and die. At one time Alzheimers was associated with aluminium pots, and everyone through out their pots.

Listening to EU radio the other night they said that last year 25,000 deaths across Europe were directly attributed to the extraordinarily hot summer.

[cowman]

Pandianna: I believe the Japanese have found it in an animal 18 months old? And they've been testing everything for how long?
Perhaps it isn't a big deal , but the fact remains the science on this whole thing is really muddy. Do you think groups like PETA or Earth First will accept the so called science for very long when in reality the science changes everyday? And they can make our life merry indeed!
This is the reason we need to test. To test with a live pre-slaughter test! If we are over reacting what have we lost? $7 or $8 US/animal? We need our governments to be bold right now! Unfortunately that isn't the nature of the beasts we have elected!

[pandiana]

cowman, the problem with testing under 20 months is that the test cannot pick up the prion in a younger animal, not whether or not the animal will go on to show symptoms of BSE if it lives long enought. I think it is the sensitivity of the test that is at issue and wether the plaques are present in high enough concentration. Maybe...

[cowman]

But Pandianna the Japanese found BSE in an animal 18 months old... Will they find others?
Part of the problem is perception. If you cut it off at 20 months, and the Japanese say whoa we found one at 18 months, how will that look? It will be percieved as only doing half the job? We are not talking about how some scientist or you or me might percieve this, but how the little housewife with three kids might see this.
I was talking to a dairy farmer the other day who took in two bull calves to the auction. He got a check for $4.96! This just can't go on for very much longer before we are all broke and out of the business? I know there are lots of people who are almost there. The wolf is at the door and we need to do something?

[pandiana]

How come bull calves (I assume under 30 months) would be dinged as they they were over 30 months?

[kato]

I think a lot of our Holstein steers were killed in the States for hamburger. The market for them is gone. Our packers just aren't interested in buying them, so they get lumped in with the cows.