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Mark Thorson Mark Thorson is offline
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Default Another Canadian Mad Cow

Ken Davey wrote:
>
> id=9184296B-D4ED-49A2-A173-AEB0DD18A6CE
> "Mark Thorson" > wrote in message
> ...
> > Even though cattle remains were banned from cattle feed
> > ten years ago, new cases of Mad Cow Disease continue to be
> > found.
> >
> > http://www.cbc.ca/canada/edmonton/st...w-alberta.html

>
> And your point is?
> BSE (mad cow disease) is a naturally ocurring thing. It was accelerated
> by the idiotic practice of feeding animal 'remains' to cattle that
> normally feed on vegetation.
> There is nothing abnormal about the odd diagnosis of this condition.
> And this does not, in any way, indicate a higher risk in the food chain.
> This (vanishingly small risk) has always been present. The only change
> has been the awareness of the disease and the vigilance to keep any
> suspect animals out of the human (and any other) feed source.


What evidence do you have that it was present
in North American herds before being introduced
from Europe? It was not here before it was
introduced, but it's here now and it's spreading.
We're in the early stages of an epidemic which
will only get worse as time passes.

Quoting from the report of the USDA's own panel of experts:
http://www.aphis.usda.gov/lpa/issues...BSE_Report.pdf

"The subcommittee recommends that
future surveillance programmes should be
targeted to the population with highest risk
of exposure to the BSE agent. At some
point in the past, targeting based on the
location of cattle imported from Europe and
other BSE risk countries, their points of
slaughter and rendering and subsequent
consumption in cattle feed was theoretically
possible. However, with the passage of time
since the importations and the amplification
of the agent within North America, this
approach is no longer appropriate."

It is not in the public interest to have
the USDA resisting the effort to test for
Mad Cow Disease:

http://www.foodconsumer.org/777/8/US..._program.shtml

Or to have the NIH attempting to destroy
evidence of the progress of the epidemic:

http://www.organicconsumers.org/madc...verup32505.cfm