Vohs and other deserve compensation in US value

[DNaker]

Having been involved in the TB eradication zone in Manitoba Mr Vohs probaly will not receive fair compensation for his animals. CFIA has a cap value of $2500/head. Producers in the zone area have been trying to get this changed for years with no luck.

There is also the stigma of being quarantined. There is no reason in @#$## that anyone shound not buy livestock from Mr Vohs in the future but human nature is human nature. Even though,producers in the TB eradication zone, have been tested numerous times and came up clear, there are producers who once had a thriving purebred market that have now gotten out of it bcause of the difficulty of selling animals stigmatized in being in a zone. So for all you producers who have supported Mr Vohs in the past keep on supporting him in the future. From what I understand it was a quality herd in the past and wiil continue to be a quality herd in the future

[cakadu]

I am sad that the Vohs have gotten caught up in this through no fault of their own and I truly hope that they can recover from this. It must be so very difficult to know that YOU have played by the rules and done everything you were supposed to and you still end up with problems.

Like many of you, I wonder about the origins and transmission of BSE, or the whole TSE thing. Correct me if I am wrong, but doesn't BSE occur spontaneously? Granted, it is not common at all, but it still can occur on it's own, at least from what I've heard and read about it.

If that is the case, then why are we so up in arms about 3 cases? There are some 5.5 million cattle in the country and even if the odds were 1 in a million that it would occur all on it's own, then it would stand to reason that 5 could potentially get it.

The other thing I think about is the fact that grassfarmer has talked about it being passed in milk replacer. Could that be why we have seen it primarily in the old dairy cows versus beef cattle - at least up until this latest case. Most dairy calves are fed milk replacer.

A few years back I heard a food safety expert (professor emeritus) talk about e-coli. He said that what we know now about e-coli is barely scratching the surface and is essentially the tip of the iceberg. If we have been studying e-coli so closely for years and still don't have much of an idea about it, wouldn't it stand to reason that, notwithstanding all the research in the U.K., that we are still a ways off from knowing anything definitive about it as well?

As usual, there are more questions than answers.

[grassfarmer]

There is a review of literature relating to BSE and possible connection to the milk replacer at: <http://www.priondata.org/data/A_milktransmission.html>