BSE - U.S Continues to Look Other Way

[farmers_son]

According to the Associated Press, the USDA did not check the offsring of the Texas Brahma for BSE, deciding to only check cattle born within one year of the positive cow.

The USDA has stated that a number of animals in the birth cohort have left the ranch. Of these, it is felt "a good number" can be traced.

In December 2003, the USDA was only able to trace "about 50%" of the birth cohort. Attempts to locate the offspring of the Washington Holstein were unsuccesful. The USDA is not testing the offspring component of this, their second BSE positive.

Those U.S. cattle that can be found are being tested using the rapid BSE test, not the gold standard IHC test or the more reliable Western Blot test, both of which are used in Canada.

In Canada, the CFIA successfully identified and tested both the birth cohorts and the offspring component of the 3 Canadian cases of BSE.

Perhaps CFIA officials should send a team of officials to the United States to investigate the USDA BSE controls, much the same as U.S. officials did in Canada following positive tests last January.

[cowman]

Well I thought the theory was: BSE can't be passed on to offspring? Isn't that the "best known science"? So why bother testing the offspring?
I don't believe the BSE case in the US has caused much of a ripple or a mass outcry about food safety...despite R-CALFs best efforts? Hopefully we've moved beyond all the hysteria about this disease.
I think R-CALFs latest argument "Canadian cattle will endanger the Northern Herd" is really pathetic! Like now they are implying they can become a regional herd...instead of a national herd? These guys don't seem to have any shame!

[farmers_son]

Whether maternal transmission is possible or myth we can contrast the USDA response to their domestic BSE positive to the Canadian response which is quite different. In the U.S. testing was conducted on two groups removed from the herd at an undisclosed ranch in Texas; 29 cows were tested on Wednesday, 38 on Friday. These cows were declared negative using the rapid test.
In Canada’s first case of BSE all animals from the case farm, that is the farm which had the positive case, the three trace-forward premises, the first line of inquiry of the trace-back premises involving four farms, two in Alberta, two in Saskatchewan, and the three farms in BC associated with the feed investigation have been dealt with, slaughtered and which totals now just over 1,160 animals that have been taken.

1160 animals versus 67 in the U.S. Granted the U.S. investigation is not complete but is clear the U.S. investigation is not up to international standards. While the CFIA did use rapid tests in its investigation as the U.S. did, further tests were conducted in Canada using the IHC and Western Blot. Given the conflicting results from BSE tests in the United States, it would have been prudent to have used more than just a rapid test in these investigations.

In each instance of BSE in Canada the investigation fully traced the birth cohort, recently born offspring and feed to which the affected animal may have been exposed early in its life. Certainly the offspring of the Texas Brahma would have to be considered animals of interest if a serious investigation was being conducted. Whether the reason the USDA is not testing the offspring is because they cannot find them or they do not want to find them, the reality is the USDA needs to find them if they can ever claim to have completely investigated this BSE positive in the U.S.

I presume the USDA is investigating the source of the contaminated feed but given their history of looking the other way no can take it for granted.

[grassfarmer]

Cheating and Americans aside I am not in favour of tracking and killing offspring or grazing herdmates of BSE positive cows. I think the UK followed the right policy on this - kill the cows showing BSE symptoms and also kill out birth cohorts and test them. Killing offspring or going in and killing an entire herd as was done in Canada is not scientific. This latter method was invented in France to ensure "consumer confidence" by treating BSE as some kind of contagious disease implying that consumers were too stupid to understand the complexity of BSE.
The other suspicion total herd destruction brings to my mind is that officials don't really believe the "contaminated" feed theory - if they did they would concentrate on the birth cohorts that ate out of the same troughs.
Funnily enough in the UK they never made any great effort or inroads into tracing feed that might have
"infected" individual cows that contracted BSE. Feed would be harder to trace there as there were numerous feedmills and most farms dealt with several - still it makes me wonder how serious they were about finding a possible cause..

[silverback]

That makes no sense to me. What should we do, put the herdmates in a closed feedlot and wait until they show signs of BSE. Is it not common sense that if one can have it, they all can? As of right now the only approved way to test is to kill them all. Or am I wrong?

[grassfarmer]

Was it my post that made no sense to you Silverback? Assuming it was I will explain again - birth cohorts - that is to say calves born in the same year as a BSE case, should be killed and tested. They ate the same feed as young calves and that is the only risk period in a cow's life. 18 month old heifers do not suddenly eat something that starts BSE in motion. So in a herd where a case occurs in a 10 year old cow the 3 year olds and the 15 year olds will not be at risk.
This is assuming there is any truth in the "infected" feed theory.
Killing birth cohorts has been proven to identify the BSE positive cattle in the UK. In Canada it is clear that the cases so far have had neither cohorts or herdmates with BSE. That indicates to me a very low prevelance of BSE in the herd - indeed the cases we had may well have been sporadic cases and nothing to do with "contaminated"feed.
Killing out cows that shared summer pasture with the original case was done for the sake of consumer confidence not for any scientific reason. I object to sacrificing animals to satisfy human ignorance - it seems kind of pagan to me.