Mad Cow?

[rain]

What is the talke about mad cow in Alberta?

[charliep]

For the press releases on the BSE issue, go to our AAFRD website.

http://www1.agric.gov.ab.ca/app21/rtw/index.jsp

[melvill]

A great web page with some good links if you want to know more about prions is
http://www-micro.msb.le.ac.uk/3035/prions.html

Yes, the hypen is supposed to be there after the triple w.

[rain]

Is there any other way to get BSE other eating contaminated feed?

[charliep]

Contaminate feed is the way of transmission that has occurred to date.

[grassfarmer]

There have also been a few cases in the UK long after the contaminated feed was removed from the market and I don't think they have categorically been able to rule out maternal transmission.

[melvill]

I would encourage you to look at the web page in my earlier post. It's pretty technical but it is readable. All kinds of interesting info on prion-related diseases including the fact that it is known to happen spontaneously in animals with no known way of having contacted it. Apparently CJV happens spontaneously in 1 in 1 million humans around the world annually.

Also look at the links at the bottom of the page. The links are very good.

[liberty]

Just for some interesting reading, here is the website of British cattle farmer Mark Purdey who has done a tremendous amount of research into Mad Cow disease and who firmly believes most scientists are barking up the wrong tree:

http://www.purdeyenvironment.com/

Basically, his thesis is that cattle get mad cow disease as a result of ingesting too much manganese, which he believes came about as a result of a warble fly campaign in Britain in the early 1980's. The campaign mandated extensive use of organophosphate chemicals to treat cattle, which disturbed the copper/manganese balance in their brains.

Mark Purdey refused to carry out the order, and went to court to challenge it. This, he believes, is why his cattle herd never got BSE.

He also has found that areas where native deer get a similar disease are high in naturally occurring manganese, which the deer apparently ingest through pine needles.

He speculates that most humans get the disease through exposure to organophosphate chemicals (apparently found in head lice medications) and from living in proximity to industrial sites that pollute the surrounding areas with heavy metals like manganese.

He also speculates that cattle may get BSE from eating feed that is too high in manganese.

I think this is a thesis worth exploring. It explains why, even though Britain exported thousands of tons of scrapie-infected feed around the world years ago, the disease is virtually unknown in most other nations.

It also explains why the population of Wales has never experienced an epidemic of the human version of BSE, despite the centuries-old custom of eating sheep's brains.

[ianben]

Not sure anyone understands BSE/CJD yet

In UK feeding bone meal of infected animals back to cattle was the cause of the major epedemic here.
Where the original infected brain came from that is as far as I know as yet unclear.

Perhaps there has always been a few rare cases in cattle just like CJD in humans diagnosed as something else.

Media reaction is the problem for the beef industry.

Sounds like you guys are getting the treatment we got here.Should have 10%of UK suffering CJD by now but a report hidden by Iraq war stated 50% of population were totally immune to CJD and the all 127 who have so far died from new var CJD were in a very small group who are highly suseptable.

Could try to turn this into a success story showing how well the system works when the one cow in millions with BSE has been found and removed from the food chain.

Good luck I hope you can win as enough damage has been done with mis information and scaremongering over BSE.