New York Times
January 5, 2004

Mad Cow Forces Beef Industry to Change Course
By MICHAEL MOSS, RICHARD A. OPPEL JR. and SIMON ROMERO

Jeffrey Behling, a dairy farmer in Washington State, used to burn the
carcasses of his hobbled "downer" cattle until he found there was a
market for their meat. Even so, selling damaged cows for human
consumption never sat well with Mr. Behling, who in 2001 briefly had
in his feedlot the Holstein cow identified last month as the downer
with mad cow disease.

"It's an absurd practice," Mr. Behling, 44, said in an interview.
"Foolishness caused by maybe a certain amount of greed."

The financial motive that drove the industry to defend practices like
selling downers has been turned on its head by the discovery of mad
cow disease. Now, in an attempt to rescue the market for American
beef, the industry is being forced to accept regulation it has long
fought.

But some large American companies that process and sell beef had
already abandoned those more controversial practices, which had been a
rallying point for food safety advocates since mad cow disease
appeared overseas nearly two decades ago. While a schism developed in
the industry, the current crisis reveals how government regulators
sided with companies that adhered to those methods of operation.

When an animal rights group, Farm Sanctuary, and an individual,
Michael Baur, sued the government to force a ban on using downer
animals for food, government lawyers persuaded a federal judge to
dismiss the case on the ground that mad cow disease, or bovine
spongiform encephalopathy, had not appeared in the United States.

"The threat of B.S.E. from downed livestock is not `real and
immediate,' " the lawyers argued. "B.S.E. has never been found in the
country's livestock, and there is no reasoned basis to expect that it
ever will be considering the measures being taken against it." An
appeals court reinstated the case on Dec. 16, 2003 - one week before
the announcement that the disease had been discovered.

For years, the industry had a simple strategy: Fight proposals that
would crimp its ability to squeeze as much revenue as possible from
each cow. The finances were compelling.

At least 150,000 downer cattle - those who because of injury or
illness cannot walk - were sold annually for human consumption for as
much as a few hundred dollars apiece, extra money for cattlemen
struggling with low prices. Food safety advocates warned that these
cattle could carry disease, but the political power of the industry
was evident in 2002 when its lobbyists helped defeat legislation
banning the commercial slaughter of downer cattle even after it had
been approved by the House and the Senate.

In the 1990's, meatpackers bought machines that were able to strip a
few extra pounds off carcasses while saving millions in labor costs.
Critics tried to limit the use of the so-called advanced meat recovery
systems, citing studies showing that the extra meat was sometimes
laced with nerve tissues, where mad cow disease can incubate. But by
one consultant's account several years ago, getting rid of the
machines would mean a loss to the industry of more than $130 million a
year.

Now the money saved by fighting those changes is dwarfed by the
billions the industry stands to lose unless it can convince consumers,
especially overseas, that its beef is safe.

"They played a high-risk, high-stakes game, and they lost their bet,"
said Representative Gary L. Ackerman, a New York Democrat who pushed
for a ban on the commercial slaughter of downer cows. "Now the
perception among millions of people is that this product isn't safe,
and they can't put Humpty Dumpty back together again."

It Was the Best of Times

As part of the campaign to restore consumer confidence, Agriculture
Secretary Ann M. Veneman last week banned the use of downer cattle for
meat and imposed further regulation on advanced recovery systems.
Still, after the disease was detected last month, cattle prices
plunged about 20 percent, while the $3.6 billion export market for
beef, veal and variety meats largely evaporated, according to
Cattle-Fax, an industry research firm. This came after United States
beef prices had reached record highs, partly because of the
restriction of imports from Canada after the mad cow outbreak there
and the rising popularity of beef-friendly eating trends like the
Atkins diet.

"The last year had been heaven on earth for beef producers," said Don
Stull, a co-author of "Slaughterhouse Blues," a study of the meat
industry.

But even in the best of times, meatpacking remains a cutthroat
business. Steve Kay, the publisher of Cattle Buyers Weekly, estimates
that profit margins rarely climb above 2 percent as companies deal
with fluctuating cattle prices and relatively higher labor costs.

Those financial constraints, which led meatpackers to harvest every
last pound of meat, also caused consolidation in the industry.

Five meatpackers now slaughter more than 80 percent of the nation's
steers and heifers: Tyson, Excel, Swift, National Beef Packing and
Smithfield. Bigger slaughterhouses have cut processing costs by as
much as 40 percent, according to Agriculture Department data.
Wholesale beef prices have declined almost every year since the early
1980's.

"We have the cheapest food supply in the world in terms of what we
spend on food as part of our incomes," said Dean Cliver, a professor
of population health at the University of California at Davis.

Affordable beef has helped make for easy relations between the
industry and federal regulators. According to the Center for Science
in the Public Interest, a consumer group, a dozen top officials of the
Department of Agriculture have worked or lobbied for the industry or
for industry trade groups. They include Jim Moseley, the deputy
agriculture secretary, who was managing director of Infinity Pork LLC,
a hog farm; Dr. Chuck Lambert, the deputy under secretary for
marketing and regulatory programs, who was chief economist of the
National Cattlemen's Beef Association; and Mary Waters, the assistant
secretary for Congressional relations, who was senior director and
legislative counsel for ConAgra Foods. "It's not surprising the
industry has so much influence given the number of U.S.D.A. officials
who have been hired directly out of the meat industry," said Caroline
Smith DeWaal, the center's food safety director.

Alisa Harrison, the department's press secretary, said Secretary
Veneman set policy by consulting a wide range of advisers and interest
groups. "To make a sweeping charge that her decisions are influenced
just because she has people from industry on her staff is very
disingenuous," she said. She also noted that the department's top food
safety official, Dr. Elsa A. Murano, had been director of the Center
for Food Safety at Texas A&M University.

Ms. Harrison also said the department had been attentive to the
dangers of mad cow well before last month. "We were able to make the
quick announcement that we did last week because a lot of the
groundwork had been going on" since the discovery in May of a cow in
Canada with the disease, she said. "These are things we have been
looking at."

But the debate over the advanced recovery system shows how the
industry and regulators have resisted pressure from safety advocates
since the disease appeared in Britain in 1986 and then spread to 18
other European countries.

New Process, New Concerns

The technology, developed a decade ago, uses hydraulic pressure to
force extra pounds off cow carcasses, producing filler for processed
foods like hamburger, hot dogs and pizza toppings. Consumer groups
initially complained that bone was getting into the advanced meat
recovery product and argued that the product should not be labeled as
beef. Then, in 1997, federal agriculture officials announced that they
had found spinal cord tissue in some of the meat.

Concerned that the nerve tissue could increase the public's risk of
contracting mad cow disease, consumer groups asked the government to
ban the technology, said Linda Golodner, president of the National
Consumers League.

But both the industry and government regulators resisted, arguing that
the absence of the disease in the United States showed that there was
no problem. "For us, so far, it's a non-public-health issue because we
have no B.S.E.," Kaye Wachsmuth, who was then deputy administrator for
public health science at the Agriculture Department, said in 1998.

There were other arguments against the ban. The machinery replaced
workers who could suffer crippling injury from trimming the carcasses
by hand; one consultant study estimated that 394 workers would be
injured if slaughterhouses returned to hand-trimming.

Companies that sell the machines say such beef poses no threat. "The
accepted science essentially states that there is not any relationship
between B.S.E. and A.M.R.," said Harold T. Hodges, vice president of
government relations and product quality for the BFD Corporation, one
of the distributors of the machines. "We've never had an issue."

Proponents of the technology argued that proper enforcement of the
technology, rather than a ban, could prevent contamination.

"It's always been a legitimate enforcement compliance issue to ensure
that what you call beef is beef," said Robert Hibbert, a lawyer who
represented meat processors that used the technology. "There is no
justification for banning something on the basis that it has been
removed by a machine rather than by hand with a knife."

But some industry officials worried that not every processor used the
machinery properly. At an American Meat Institute conference in
Chicago in 1997, an executive of a major beef producer warned that
applying too much pressure would force bone material into the beefy
mush. In addition, the spinal cord has to be carefully removed before
the cow carcass is fed to the machine.

Second Thoughts

As federal officials continued to find traces of nervous-system tissue
in recovered beef, some companies determined that the potential cost
of these practices outweighed the gains.

With consumer groups pressing for a boycott of meat produced using
advanced recovery technology, a host of restaurants and producers
announced they were advanced meat recovery free, including General
Mills and McDonald's, which swore off downer-cow meat as well.

In a fact sheet, McDonald's says, "These policies meet or exceed all
government requirements, and have been reviewed by our international
scientific council on B.S.E., made up of renowned experts in this
field."

Meanwhile, some slaughterhouses had other reasons to stop using the
machines. In late 2002, Shapiro Packing, a processor in Augusta, Ga.,
produced tainted beef using the machinery system. The contaminated
material was destroyed, but the company had to spend a lot of money to
shore up its operation, said Dane Bernard, vice president for food
safety at Keystone Foods, which manages Shapiro Packing.

Additional workers were placed on the line to ensure that the
carcasses were properly stripped of their spinal cords, and the
company's inspections became nearly continuous, Mr. Bernard said. The
new measures increased expenses while big beef buyers were boasting
that their food was not processed using advanced meat-recovery
systems. So last summer, Shapiro mothballed its machinery and returned
to manual trimming.

"I can't say we had a crystal ball," Mr. Bernard said. "Sometimes it's
better to be lucky than good."

The discovery of mad cow disease is likely to increase the debate over
the technology. Dr. Wachsmuth, the agriculture official who defended
the technology in 1998, said in an interview on Saturday that the
absence of the disease had been an important factor in that defense.
"The mere threat of it wasn't enough," said Dr. Wachsmuth, who is now
retired. "Now that we do have B.S.E., maybe it should be revisited."

Dan Murphy, a spokesman for the American Meat Institute, the
meatpackers' trade group, said the number of processors using the
technology had recently fallen to fewer than 30 from 35. He said that
the machines once produced several hundred million pounds of meat a
year, but that a survey in late 2002 found the number had dropped to
45 million.

Even so, he said, "We're confident that this is a safe, wholesome
product that doesn't trigger any concern or carry any danger in its
use." But he acknowledged that some members of the association were
less supportive: "There are companies that would just as soon we said
nothing."

In her announcement last week, Secretary Veneman imposed regulations
intended to further keep unwanted tissue from the food supply, but she
stopped short of a ban on the technology.

Mr. Murphy, the industry spokesman, acknowledged that a further review
of the technology was possible, especially if there is pressure from
overseas trading partners. "Nobody is going to give up $1.2 billion in
beef trade for a handful of A.M.R.," he said.

In Washington State, Mr. Behling, the onetime holder of the diseased
cow, said that in the days since the discovery of mad cow, the
industry has learned that lesson in global economics. Mr. Behling, who
has a few thousand cows in his operation, said that when the
occasional downer cow appeared, a slaughterer would drive out to his
farm with a hoist and give him $100 for the hobbled animal.

But in the wake of the mad cow crisis, he said, "My feeling is that
any money that dairy farmers might have made from downer cows, they
gave it all back this week."

================================================== ======

Is it still only one cow that has been found in the United States to have
the disease? I mean, the article (what of it I read, it was very boring)
made it sound as if the was some actual danger. Maybe thousands were found
to be infected and I didn't read about it yet?

"Bill" > wrote in message
t...
> Is it still only one cow that has been found in the United States to have
> the disease? I mean, the article (what of it I read, it was very boring)
> made it sound as if the was some actual danger. Maybe thousands were
found
> to be infected and I didn't read about it yet?

There's been speculation that many of the people who were diagnosed with
Alzheimer's in the US may have actually had CJD. I thought I read something
about the brains of people who had died from Alzheimer's being studied and
the ones doing it finding out they had died of CJD, but I can't remember
where the article is now.

-Rubystars

"Rubystars" > wrote in message
y.com...
>
> "Bill" > wrote in message
> t...
> > Is it still only one cow that has been found in the United States to
have
> > the disease? I mean, the article (what of it I read, it was very
boring)
> > made it sound as if the was some actual danger. Maybe thousands were
> found
> > to be infected and I didn't read about it yet?
>
> There's been speculation that many of the people who were diagnosed with
> Alzheimer's in the US may have actually had CJD. I thought I read
something
> about the brains of people who had died from Alzheimer's being studied and
> the ones doing it finding out they had died of CJD, but I can't remember
> where the article is now.
>
> -Rubystars
>
There is no proof what so ever that those inflicted with Alzheimer's had in
fact CJD. There was one cow found to be diseased. They said millions would
die in England when they had their scare and they had thousands of diseased
cattle. They had a couple of deaths there. More liberal media hocus pocus.
We had one cow in Canada and not one illness. These **** wads in the media
don't care how they sell papers or get ratings.

Jeff

Jeff > writes

>There is no proof what so ever that those inflicted with Alzheimer's had in
>fact CJD.

It's not unknown, apparently, for people who have died of alzheimers to
also be showing some CJD-like pathology. They probably have heart
disease too ....

>There was one cow found to be diseased. They said millions would
>die in England when they had their scare

Some people said 10's of millions (a vegetarian professor of
microbiology for example).

>and they had thousands of diseased
>cattle.

Actually about 170,000 clinical cases of BSE,
probably about a million counting sub-clinical cases.

>They had a couple of deaths there.

Under 150 over 10 years, about 20/year in a population of 60M.

>More liberal media hocus pocus.
>We had one cow in Canada and not one illness. These **** wads in the media
>don't care how they sell papers or get ratings.

This is normal. It so easy to sell copy by producing scare stories
written by ignorant journalists for an ignorant and fearful population
that they seem to find it irresistible.

I do hope someone sues a few newspapers,
there would be a cheer from across the water.

--
Oz
This post is worth absolutely nothing and is probably fallacious.
DEMON address no longer in use.

"Oz" > wrote in message
...
> Jeff > writes
>
> >There is no proof what so ever that those inflicted with Alzheimer's had
in
> >fact CJD.
>
> It's not unknown, apparently, for people who have died of alzheimers to
> also be showing some CJD-like pathology. They probably have heart
> disease too ....
>
> >There was one cow found to be diseased. They said millions would
> >die in England when they had their scare
>
> Some people said 10's of millions (a vegetarian professor of
> microbiology for example).
>
> >and they had thousands of diseased
> >cattle.
>
> Actually about 170,000 clinical cases of BSE,
> probably about a million counting sub-clinical cases.
>
> >They had a couple of deaths there.
>
> Under 150 over 10 years, about 20/year in a population of 60M.
>
> >More liberal media hocus pocus.
> >We had one cow in Canada and not one illness. These **** wads in the
media
> >don't care how they sell papers or get ratings.


So you're saying that if prions could vote, they'd vote democrat? This
reminds me so much of the imbeciles that refuted the devastating affects of
DDT back in the 60's. They were the one ultimately proven wrong, now
weren't they? One stalwart individual even sprinkled it on his breakfast
cereal to prove it was all just "hocus pocus." He died, at a very young
age, of liver cancer a few years later.

Basic husbandry practices in Europe dating back 8 centuries dictated that
animals not be fed the remains of their own species. Seems a few lessons
have been forgotten. But by all means label every scientist out to
enlighten and protect the public some wild-eyed radical.

Have some DDT with your Cheerios and think about it.

Paul

On Mon, 5 Jan 2004 03:00:20 -0600, "Jeff" > wrote:

>
>"Rubystars" > wrote in message
gy.com...

>> There's been speculation that many of the people who were diagnosed with
>> Alzheimer's in the US may have actually had CJD. I thought I read
>>something
>> about the brains of people who had died from Alzheimer's being studied and
>> the ones doing it finding out they had died of CJD, but I can't remember
>> where the article is now.

>There is no proof what so ever that those inflicted with Alzheimer's had in
>fact CJD.

We must be careful not to mix up things. There is a disease we can call
CJD (classical CJD), and another distinct from it, called vCJD (variant
CJD). Undoubtedly there have been people diagnosed with Alzheimer's
who really died from CJD, but not likely any from vCJD. vCJD affects
relatively young people.

>There was one cow found to be diseased. They said millions would
>die in England when they had their scare and they had thousands of diseased
>cattle. <snip>

Pointedly one could say some said there was only a relatively few BSE
clinical cases at one stage during the UK epizootic , with the case
number appearing to be leveling out at a low prevalence. Downplaying
it, so maybe it was no big deal, one could wait and see. However, they
were sitting on a huge number of subclinical cases, the proverbial
hidden part of the ice-berg they just could not see yet, and we are to
be happy that some were sufficiently foresighted to act accordingly.

It is difficult to come to terms with a disease with long incubation,
and more so, when the disease is new. When vCJD first emerged it was
known that people in England had eaten 100s of thousands of subclinical
BSE affected cattle. Necessarily any reasonably estimated ranges for
the possible scope of the newly discovered disease would have to be
wide. In either case complacency, leaning to the low end would have to
be out of the question.

"Torsten Brinch" > wrote in message
...
> On Mon, 5 Jan 2004 03:00:20 -0600, "Jeff" > wrote:
>
> >
> >"Rubystars" > wrote in message
> gy.com...
>
> >> There's been speculation that many of the people who were diagnosed
with
> >> Alzheimer's in the US may have actually had CJD. I thought I read
> >>something
> >> about the brains of people who had died from Alzheimer's being studied
and
> >> the ones doing it finding out they had died of CJD, but I can't
remember
> >> where the article is now.
>
> >There is no proof what so ever that those inflicted with Alzheimer's had
in
> >fact CJD.
>
> We must be careful not to mix up things. There is a disease we can call
> CJD (classical CJD), and another distinct from it, called vCJD (variant
> CJD). Undoubtedly there have been people diagnosed with Alzheimer's
> who really died from CJD, but not likely any from vCJD. vCJD affects
> relatively young people.
>
> >There was one cow found to be diseased. They said millions would
> >die in England when they had their scare and they had thousands of
diseased
> >cattle. <snip>
>
> Pointedly one could say some said there was only a relatively few BSE
> clinical cases at one stage during the UK epizootic , with the case
> number appearing to be leveling out at a low prevalence. Downplaying
> it, so maybe it was no big deal, one could wait and see. However, they
> were sitting on a huge number of subclinical cases, the proverbial
> hidden part of the ice-berg they just could not see yet, and we are to
> be happy that some were sufficiently foresighted to act accordingly.

note that when people have their tonsils out, these are now, in many parts
of the UK if not all of it, tested for nvCJD.. The idea being that these
tissues are among the first parts to become infective and therefore will be
a useful marker as to the number of cases. So far none have come up infected

Jim Webster

"Torsten Brinch" > wrote in message ...

> We must be careful not to mix up things. There is a disease we can call
> CJD (classical CJD), and another distinct from it, called vCJD (variant
> CJD). Undoubtedly there have been people diagnosed with Alzheimer's
> who really died from CJD, but not likely any from vCJD. vCJD affects
> relatively young people.

'TSEs are a mysterious class of diseases that are called by different
names in different species. For instance some identified types of TSE
are Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (CJD), and its specific strain, new
variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (nvCJD) which is a human disease
apparently caused by the same agent which causes bovine spongiform
encephalopathy (BSE) or British "mad cow" disease, Fatal Familial
Insomnia (FFA), Gerstmann-Straussler-Scheinker Syndrome (GSS),
scrapie in sheep, transmissible mink encephalopathy (TME) in mink in
North America, and chronic wasting disease (CWD) in deer and elk in
North America. There may be different strains of TSE within species,
and new strains may be produced when TSEs move from one animal
species to another.

The common characteristics of TSE diseases are that they are
invariably fatal. '
http://www.icta.org/legal/madcow.htm

BSE prions propagate as either variant CJD-like or sporadic CJD-like
prion strains in transgenic mice expressing human prion protein
http://emboj.oupjournals.org/cgi/con...1/23/6358?etoc

"Now people are beginning to realize that because something looks
like sporadic CJD they can't necessarily conclude that it's not linked
to (mad cow disease)," said Laura Manuelidis, section chief of surgery
in the neuropathology department at Yale University, who conducted
a 1989 study that found 13 percent of Alzheimer's patients actually
had CJD. ...'
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/n...ory_15312.html

"Jeff" > wrote in message ...
>
> "Rubystars" > wrote in message
> y.com...
> >
> > "Bill" > wrote in message
> > t...
> > > Is it still only one cow that has been found in the United States to have
> > > the disease? I mean, the article (what of it I read, it was very boring)
> > > made it sound as if the was some actual danger. Maybe thousands were
> > > found to be infected and I didn't read about it yet?
> >
> > There's been speculation that many of the people who were diagnosed with
> > Alzheimer's in the US may have actually had CJD. I thought I read something
> > about the brains of people who had died from Alzheimer's being studied and
> > the ones doing it finding out they had died of CJD, but I can't remember
> > where the article is now.
> >
> > -Rubystars
> >
> There is no proof what so ever that those inflicted with Alzheimer's had in
> fact CJD. There was one cow found to be diseased. They said millions would
> die in England when they had their scare and they had thousands of diseased
> cattle. They had a couple of deaths there. More liberal media hocus pocus.
> We had one cow in Canada and not one illness. These **** wads in the media
> don't care how they sell papers or get ratings.
>
> Jeff

Alzheimer's And CJD Scientifically Linked
By Michael Greger
12-29-03

(First published 6-16-96)

If indeed a form of Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE)
exists in the United States, one might expect to see a rise in the
number of cases of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD). CJD,
however, is not a reportable illness in this country (Holman, 1995).
Because the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) does not actively
monitor the disease (Altman, 1996d) a rise similar to the one in
Britain could be missed (Altman, 1996d). Already, a number of
U.S. CJD clusters have been found. In the largest known U.S.
outbreak of sporadic cases to date(Flannery, 1996) a five-fold
expected rate was found to be associated with cheese
consumption in Pennsylvania's Lehigh Valley (Little, 1993) A
striking increase in CJD was also reported in Florida (Berger,
1994) and there is an anecdotal report of an cluster in Oregon
(Boule, 1996). An analysis of death certificates in a number of
states, though, showed an overall stable and typical CJD
incidence rate from 1979 to 1993 (World, 1996). To track the
disease, the CDC has just initiated a four-state study of death
certificates (Altman, 1996a), but since it is considered well
known that death-certificate diagnoses are not always accurate
(Davanpour, 1993) the survey may not provide an accurate
assessment.

The true prevalence of prion diseases in this or any other
country remains a mystery (Harrison, 1991). Compounding
the uncertainty, autopsies are rarely performed on atypical
dementias (Harrison, 1991), because medical professionals
fear infection (Altman, 1996a). The officially reported rate
in this country is less than 1 case in a million people per year
(World, 1996). An informal survey of neuropathologists,
however, registered a theoretical range of 2-12% of all
dementias as actually CJD (Harrison, 1991). And hundreds
of thousands of Americans suffer from severe dementias
every year (Brayne, 1994; United, 1995). Two other studies
average about a 3% CJD rate among dementia patients
(Mahendra, 1987; Wade, 1987). A preliminary 1989
University of Pennsylvania study showed that 5% of patients
diagnosed with dementia were actually dying from
Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (Boller, 1989). It would seem
CJD is seriously underdiagnosed at present (Harrison, 1991).

The most common misdiagnosis of CJD is Alzheimer's
disease (Harrison, 1991). CJD was even described by
our government's top CJD researcher (Wlazelek, 1990a)
as "Alzheimer's in fast forward (Wlazelek, 1990b)." The
symptoms and pathology of both diseases overlap (Brown,
1989). There can be spongy changes in Alzheimer's, for
example, and senile plaques in CJD (Brown, 1989). The
causes may overlap as well; epidemiological evidence
suggests that people eating meat more than four times a
week for a prolonged period have a three times higher
chance of suffering a dementia than long-time vegetarians
(Giem, 1993), although this result may be confounded by
vascular factors (Van Duijn, 1996).

Paul Brown, medical director for the U.S. Public Health
Service (Gruzen, 1996), said that the brains of the young
people who died from the new CJD variant in Britain even
look like Alzheimer's brains (Hager, 1996). Stanley Prusinger,
the scientist who coined the term prion, speculates Alzheimer's
may in fact turn out to be a prion disease (Prusiner, 1984). In
younger victims the disease could look like multiple sclerosis
or a severe viral infection, according to Alzheimer's expert
Gareth Roberts (Brain, 1996).

An estimated two to three million Americans are afflicted by
Alzheimer's (Scully, 1993); it is the fourth leading cause of
death among the elderly in the U.S (Perry, 1995). Twenty
percent or more of people clinically diagnosed with Alzheimer's
disease are found at autopsy to not have had Alzheimer's at all
(McKhann, 1984). At Yale, out of 46 patients clinically
diagnosed with Alzheimer's, 6 were proven to be CJD at
autopsy (Manuelidis, 1989). In another post-mortem study 3
out of 12 "Alzheimer" patients actually died from a spongiform
encephalopathy (Teixeira, 1995).

Carleton Gajdusek, who was awarded a Nobel Prize for his
work with prion diseases (Manuelidis, 1985), estimates that
1% of people showing up in Alzheimer clinics actually have
CJD (Folstein, 1983). That means that hundreds* of people
(Hoyert, 1996; United, 1995) may already be dying from
mad cow disease each year in the United States.


WORKS CITED

Altman, Lawrence K. "Four States Watching for Brain
Disorder." New York Times, 9 April 1996a.

Altman, Lawrence K. "U.S. Officials Confident That Mad
Cow Disease of Britain Has Not Occured Here." New York
Times, 27 March 1996d: 12A.

"Apocalypse Cow: U.S. Denials Deepen Mad Cow Danger."
PR Watch, 3.1 (1996): 1-8

Berger, Joseph R., et al. "Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease: A
Ten-Year Experience." Neurology, 44 (1994): A260.

Bleifuss, Joel. "Killer Beef." In These Times, 31 May 1993: 12-15.

Boller, F., O. L. Lopez, and J. Moossy. "Diagnosis of Dementia.
" Neurology, 38 (1989): 76-79.

Boule, Margie. "Despite Anectdotal Evidence, Docs Say No
Mad Cow Disease Here." Oregonian, 16 April 1996: C01.

"Brain Disease May Be Commoner Than Thought - Expert."
Reuter Information Service, 15 May 1996.

Brayne, C. "How Common are Cognitive Impairment and
Dementia?" Dementia and Normal Aging, Canbridge: University
Press, 1994.

Brown, Paul. "Central Nervous System Amyloidoses."
Neurology, 39 (1989): 1103-1104.

Davanpour, Zoreth, et al. "Rate of Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease
in USA." Neurology, 43 (1993): A316.

Flannery, Mary. "Twelve - Fifteen 'Mad Cow' Victims a Year
in Area." Philadelphia Daily News, 26 March 1996: 03.

Folstein, M. "The Cognitive Pattern of Familial Alzheimer's
Disease." Biological Aspects of Alzheimer's Disease. Ed. R.
Katzman. Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, 1983.

Gruzen, Tara. "Sheep Parts Fail to Cause Mad Cow Disease
in U. S. Test." Seattle Times, 29 March 1996: A11.

Hager, Mary and Mark Hosenball. "'Mad Cow Disease' in
the U.S.?" Newsweek, 8 April 1996:58-59.

Harrison, Paul J., and Gareth W. Roberts. "'Life, Jim, But
Not as We Know It'? Transmissible Dementias and the Prion
Protein." British Journal of Psychiatry, 158 (1991): 457-70.

Holman, R. C., et al. "Edidemiology of Creutzfeldt-Jakob
Disease in the United States, 1979-1990." Neuroepidemiology,
14 (1995): 174-181.

Hoyert, Donna L. "Vital and Health Statistics. Mortality
Trends for Alzheimer's Disease, 1979-1991." Washington:
U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services, 1996.

Little, Brian W., et al. "The Epidemiology of Creutzfeldt-Jakob
Disease in Eastern Pennsylvania." Neurology, 43 (1993): A316.

Mahendra, B. Dementia, Lancaster: MTP Press Limited,
1987: 174.

Manuelidis, Elias E. "Presidential Address." Journal of
Neuropathology and Experimental Neurology, 44 (1985): 1-17.

Manuelidis, Elias E. and Laura Manuelidis. "Suggested Links
between Different Types of Dementias: Creutzfeldt-Jakob
Disease, Alzheimer Disease, and Retroviral CNS Infections."
Alzheimer Disease and Associated Disorders, 2 (1989): 100-109.

McKhann, Guy., et al. "Clinical Diagnosis of Alzheimer's Disease."
Neurology, 34 (1984): 939.

Prusiner, S. "Some Speculations about Prions, Amyloid, and
Alzheimer's Disease." New England Journal of Medicine, 310
(1984): 661-663.

Perry, R.T., et al. "Human Prion Protein Gene: Two Different
24 BP Deletions in an Atypical Alzheimer's Disease Family."
American Journal of Medical Genetics, 60 (1995): 12-18.

Scully, R. E., et al. "Case Records of the Massachusetts
General Hospital." New England Journal of Medicine, 29 April
1993: 1259-1263.

Teixeira, F., et al. "Clinico-Pathological Correlation in Dementias."
Journal of Psychiatry and Neuroscience, 20 (1995): 276-282.

United States Department of Commerce. Statistical Abstract
of the United States, Washington: Bureau of the Census, 1995.

Van Duijn, C. M. "Epidemiology of the Dementia: Recent
Developments and New Approaches." Neuroepidemiology,
60 (1996): 478-488.

Van Duijn, C. M. "Epidemiology of the Dementia: Recent
Developments and New Approaches." Neuroepidemiology,
60 (1996): 478-488.

Wade, J. P. H., et al. "The Clinical Diagnosis of Alzheimer's
Disease." Archives of Neurology, 44 (1987): 24-29.

Wlazelek, Ann. "Fatal Brain Disease Mystifies Experts."
Morning Call, 23 September 1990a: B01.

Wlazelek, Ann. "Scientists Try to Track Fatal Disease;
International Expert Visits Area to Study Unusual Incedence
Rate." Morning Call, 27 September 1990b: B04.

"World Health Organization Consultatoin on Public Health
Issues Related to Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy and
the Emergence of a New Variant of Creutzfeldt-Jakob
Disease.", Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, 12
April 1996: 295-303.

http://www.cyber-dyne.com/~tom/Alzhe...d.html#and%20C

*
'Currently four million Americans are diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease.
The percentage of cases is on the rise with solid research showing that
there are about 360,000 individuals newly diagnosed each year.

At Yale University and the University of Pennsylvania at Pittsburgh,
researchers recently studied the brains of people who died of Alzheimer's
disease (46 in the Yale case and 54 in the Pittsburgh study). Surprisingly,
the autopsies respectively showed that 13 percent and five percent of the
dead were actually CJD cases misdiagnosed as Alzheimer's disease.

In a third (smaller) study published in the Journal of Psychiatry and
Neuroscience (1995), investigators reported that three out of 12 patients
diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease were found to have had CJD when
autopsied. It should be noted CJD symptoms may be remarkably similar
to those of Alzheimer's disease.

There are no accurate figures for the total number of U.S. Alzheimer's
deaths each year, simply because it doesn't usually get reported as the
cause of death. The Center for Disease Control (CDC) reported only
22,725 Alzheimer's deaths in 1998. However, a spokesperson for the
National Alzheimer's Association, in a recent interview, agreed that the
actual number could easily be 100,000, or even has high as 400,000
per year. Because Alzheimer's patients usually die within 8 to 10 years,
she agreed that the CDC numbers must be grossly understated. If new
research supports that approximately 10 percent of all Alzheimer's
disease related deaths are in fact misdiagnosed CJD cases, then 10,000
to 40,000 CJD deaths will suddenly appear in America each year.
That would be an epidemic. '
http://www.parkc.org/Madcow_veggies.html

"pearl" > wrote in message
...
> "Jeff" > wrote in message
...
> >
> > "Rubystars" > wrote in message
> > y.com...
> > >
> > > "Bill" > wrote in message
> > > t...
> > > > Is it still only one cow that has been found in the United States to
have
> > > > the disease? I mean, the article (what of it I read, it was very
boring)
> > > > made it sound as if the was some actual danger. Maybe thousands
were
> > > > found to be infected and I didn't read about it yet?
> > >
> > > There's been speculation that many of the people who were diagnosed
with
> > > Alzheimer's in the US may have actually had CJD. I thought I read
something
> > > about the brains of people who had died from Alzheimer's being studied
and
> > > the ones doing it finding out they had died of CJD, but I can't
remember
> > > where the article is now.
> > >
> > > -Rubystars
> > >
> > There is no proof what so ever that those inflicted with Alzheimer's had
in
> > fact CJD. There was one cow found to be diseased. They said millions
would
> > die in England when they had their scare and they had thousands of
diseased
> > cattle. They had a couple of deaths there. More liberal media hocus
pocus.
> > We had one cow in Canada and not one illness. These **** wads in the
media
> > don't care how they sell papers or get ratings.
> >
> > Jeff
>
> Alzheimer's And CJD Scientifically Linked
> By Michael Greger
> 12-29-03
>
> (First published 6-16-96)
>
> If indeed a form of Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE)
> exists in the United States, one might expect to see a rise in the
> number of cases of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD). CJD,
> however, is not a reportable illness in this country (Holman, 1995).
> Because the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) does not actively
> monitor the disease (Altman, 1996d) a rise similar to the one in
> Britain could be missed (Altman, 1996d). Already, a number of
> U.S. CJD clusters have been found. In the largest known U.S.
> outbreak of sporadic cases to date(Flannery, 1996) a five-fold
> expected rate was found to be associated with cheese
> consumption in Pennsylvania's Lehigh Valley (Little, 1993) A
> striking increase in CJD was also reported in Florida (Berger,
> 1994) and there is an anecdotal report of an cluster in Oregon
> (Boule, 1996). An analysis of death certificates in a number of
> states, though, showed an overall stable and typical CJD
> incidence rate from 1979 to 1993 (World, 1996). To track the
> disease, the CDC has just initiated a four-state study of death
> certificates (Altman, 1996a), but since it is considered well
> known that death-certificate diagnoses are not always accurate
> (Davanpour, 1993) the survey may not provide an accurate
> assessment.
>
> The true prevalence of prion diseases in this or any other
> country remains a mystery (Harrison, 1991). Compounding
> the uncertainty, autopsies are rarely performed on atypical
> dementias (Harrison, 1991), because medical professionals
> fear infection (Altman, 1996a). The officially reported rate
> in this country is less than 1 case in a million people per year
> (World, 1996). An informal survey of neuropathologists,
> however, registered a theoretical range of 2-12% of all
> dementias as actually CJD (Harrison, 1991). And hundreds
> of thousands of Americans suffer from severe dementias
> every year (Brayne, 1994; United, 1995). Two other studies
> average about a 3% CJD rate among dementia patients
> (Mahendra, 1987; Wade, 1987). A preliminary 1989
> University of Pennsylvania study showed that 5% of patients
> diagnosed with dementia were actually dying from
> Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (Boller, 1989). It would seem
> CJD is seriously underdiagnosed at present (Harrison, 1991).
>
> The most common misdiagnosis of CJD is Alzheimer's
> disease (Harrison, 1991). CJD was even described by
> our government's top CJD researcher (Wlazelek, 1990a)
> as "Alzheimer's in fast forward (Wlazelek, 1990b)." The
> symptoms and pathology of both diseases overlap (Brown,
> 1989). There can be spongy changes in Alzheimer's, for
> example, and senile plaques in CJD (Brown, 1989). The
> causes may overlap as well; epidemiological evidence
> suggests that people eating meat more than four times a
> week for a prolonged period have a three times higher
> chance of suffering a dementia than long-time vegetarians
> (Giem, 1993), although this result may be confounded by
> vascular factors (Van Duijn, 1996).
>
> Paul Brown, medical director for the U.S. Public Health
> Service (Gruzen, 1996), said that the brains of the young
> people who died from the new CJD variant in Britain even
> look like Alzheimer's brains (Hager, 1996). Stanley Prusinger,
> the scientist who coined the term prion, speculates Alzheimer's
> may in fact turn out to be a prion disease (Prusiner, 1984). In
> younger victims the disease could look like multiple sclerosis
> or a severe viral infection, according to Alzheimer's expert
> Gareth Roberts (Brain, 1996).
>
> An estimated two to three million Americans are afflicted by
> Alzheimer's (Scully, 1993); it is the fourth leading cause of
> death among the elderly in the U.S (Perry, 1995). Twenty
> percent or more of people clinically diagnosed with Alzheimer's
> disease are found at autopsy to not have had Alzheimer's at all
> (McKhann, 1984). At Yale, out of 46 patients clinically
> diagnosed with Alzheimer's, 6 were proven to be CJD at
> autopsy (Manuelidis, 1989). In another post-mortem study 3
> out of 12 "Alzheimer" patients actually died from a spongiform
> encephalopathy (Teixeira, 1995).
>
> Carleton Gajdusek, who was awarded a Nobel Prize for his
> work with prion diseases (Manuelidis, 1985), estimates that
> 1% of people showing up in Alzheimer clinics actually have
> CJD (Folstein, 1983). That means that hundreds* of people
> (Hoyert, 1996; United, 1995) may already be dying from
> mad cow disease each year in the United States.
>
>
> WORKS CITED
>
> Altman, Lawrence K. "Four States Watching for Brain
> Disorder." New York Times, 9 April 1996a.
>
> Altman, Lawrence K. "U.S. Officials Confident That Mad
> Cow Disease of Britain Has Not Occured Here." New York
> Times, 27 March 1996d: 12A.
>
> "Apocalypse Cow: U.S. Denials Deepen Mad Cow Danger."
> PR Watch, 3.1 (1996): 1-8
>
> Berger, Joseph R., et al. "Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease: A
> Ten-Year Experience." Neurology, 44 (1994): A260.
>
> Bleifuss, Joel. "Killer Beef." In These Times, 31 May 1993: 12-15.
>
> Boller, F., O. L. Lopez, and J. Moossy. "Diagnosis of Dementia.
> " Neurology, 38 (1989): 76-79.
>
> Boule, Margie. "Despite Anectdotal Evidence, Docs Say No
> Mad Cow Disease Here." Oregonian, 16 April 1996: C01.
>
> "Brain Disease May Be Commoner Than Thought - Expert."
> Reuter Information Service, 15 May 1996.
>
> Brayne, C. "How Common are Cognitive Impairment and
> Dementia?" Dementia and Normal Aging, Canbridge: University
> Press, 1994.
>
> Brown, Paul. "Central Nervous System Amyloidoses."
> Neurology, 39 (1989): 1103-1104.
>
> Davanpour, Zoreth, et al. "Rate of Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease
> in USA." Neurology, 43 (1993): A316.
>
> Flannery, Mary. "Twelve - Fifteen 'Mad Cow' Victims a Year
> in Area." Philadelphia Daily News, 26 March 1996: 03.
>
> Folstein, M. "The Cognitive Pattern of Familial Alzheimer's
> Disease." Biological Aspects of Alzheimer's Disease. Ed. R.
> Katzman. Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, 1983.
>
> Gruzen, Tara. "Sheep Parts Fail to Cause Mad Cow Disease
> in U. S. Test." Seattle Times, 29 March 1996: A11.
>
> Hager, Mary and Mark Hosenball. "'Mad Cow Disease' in
> the U.S.?" Newsweek, 8 April 1996:58-59.
>
> Harrison, Paul J., and Gareth W. Roberts. "'Life, Jim, But
> Not as We Know It'? Transmissible Dementias and the Prion
> Protein." British Journal of Psychiatry, 158 (1991): 457-70.
>
> Holman, R. C., et al. "Edidemiology of Creutzfeldt-Jakob
> Disease in the United States, 1979-1990." Neuroepidemiology,
> 14 (1995): 174-181.
>
> Hoyert, Donna L. "Vital and Health Statistics. Mortality
> Trends for Alzheimer's Disease, 1979-1991." Washington:
> U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services, 1996.
>
> Little, Brian W., et al. "The Epidemiology of Creutzfeldt-Jakob
> Disease in Eastern Pennsylvania." Neurology, 43 (1993): A316.
>
> Mahendra, B. Dementia, Lancaster: MTP Press Limited,
> 1987: 174.
>
> Manuelidis, Elias E. "Presidential Address." Journal of
> Neuropathology and Experimental Neurology, 44 (1985): 1-17.
>
> Manuelidis, Elias E. and Laura Manuelidis. "Suggested Links
> between Different Types of Dementias: Creutzfeldt-Jakob
> Disease, Alzheimer Disease, and Retroviral CNS Infections."
> Alzheimer Disease and Associated Disorders, 2 (1989): 100-109.
>
> McKhann, Guy., et al. "Clinical Diagnosis of Alzheimer's Disease."
> Neurology, 34 (1984): 939.
>
> Prusiner, S. "Some Speculations about Prions, Amyloid, and
> Alzheimer's Disease." New England Journal of Medicine, 310
> (1984): 661-663.
>
> Perry, R.T., et al. "Human Prion Protein Gene: Two Different
> 24 BP Deletions in an Atypical Alzheimer's Disease Family."
> American Journal of Medical Genetics, 60 (1995): 12-18.
>
> Scully, R. E., et al. "Case Records of the Massachusetts
> General Hospital." New England Journal of Medicine, 29 April
> 1993: 1259-1263.
>
> Teixeira, F., et al. "Clinico-Pathological Correlation in Dementias."
> Journal of Psychiatry and Neuroscience, 20 (1995): 276-282.
>
> United States Department of Commerce. Statistical Abstract
> of the United States, Washington: Bureau of the Census, 1995.
>
> Van Duijn, C. M. "Epidemiology of the Dementia: Recent
> Developments and New Approaches." Neuroepidemiology,
> 60 (1996): 478-488.
>
> Van Duijn, C. M. "Epidemiology of the Dementia: Recent
> Developments and New Approaches." Neuroepidemiology,
> 60 (1996): 478-488.
>
> Wade, J. P. H., et al. "The Clinical Diagnosis of Alzheimer's
> Disease." Archives of Neurology, 44 (1987): 24-29.
>
> Wlazelek, Ann. "Fatal Brain Disease Mystifies Experts."
> Morning Call, 23 September 1990a: B01.
>
> Wlazelek, Ann. "Scientists Try to Track Fatal Disease;
> International Expert Visits Area to Study Unusual Incedence
> Rate." Morning Call, 27 September 1990b: B04.
>
> "World Health Organization Consultatoin on Public Health
> Issues Related to Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy and
> the Emergence of a New Variant of Creutzfeldt-Jakob
> Disease.", Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, 12
> April 1996: 295-303.
>
> http://www.cyber-dyne.com/~tom/Alzhe...d.html#and%20C
>
> *
> 'Currently four million Americans are diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease.
> The percentage of cases is on the rise with solid research showing that
> there are about 360,000 individuals newly diagnosed each year.
>
> At Yale University and the University of Pennsylvania at Pittsburgh,
> researchers recently studied the brains of people who died of Alzheimer's
> disease (46 in the Yale case and 54 in the Pittsburgh study).
Surprisingly,
> the autopsies respectively showed that 13 percent and five percent of the
> dead were actually CJD cases misdiagnosed as Alzheimer's disease.
>
> In a third (smaller) study published in the Journal of Psychiatry and
> Neuroscience (1995), investigators reported that three out of 12 patients
> diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease were found to have had CJD when
> autopsied. It should be noted CJD symptoms may be remarkably similar
> to those of Alzheimer's disease.
>
> There are no accurate figures for the total number of U.S. Alzheimer's
> deaths each year, simply because it doesn't usually get reported as the
> cause of death. The Center for Disease Control (CDC) reported only
> 22,725 Alzheimer's deaths in 1998. However, a spokesperson for the
> National Alzheimer's Association, in a recent interview, agreed that the
> actual number could easily be 100,000, or even has high as 400,000
> per year. Because Alzheimer's patients usually die within 8 to 10 years,
> she agreed that the CDC numbers must be grossly understated. If new
> research supports that approximately 10 percent of all Alzheimer's
> disease related deaths are in fact misdiagnosed CJD cases, then 10,000
> to 40,000 CJD deaths will suddenly appear in America each year.
> That would be an epidemic. '
> http://www.parkc.org/Madcow_veggies.html
>
>
>
>
>
>
>

On Mon, 5 Jan 2004 03:00:20 -0600, "Jeff" >
wrote:


> We had one cow in Canada and not one illness. These **** wads in the media
> don't care how they sell papers or get ratings.
>

I think those liberal **** wads DO care, even if you don't.

There are two salient points to be made from the Canadian
and US cow scares:

1. The practice of feeding animal protein to cattle, while
cost effective, isn't taking consumer health into
consideration.

2. Downer cows (of any sort) absolutely should not be sold
for human consumption.

Until the industry discontinues those practices, consumers
will remain wary.



Practice safe eating - always use condiments

On Mon, 5 Jan 2004 03:00:20 -0600, "Jeff" > wrote:

>
>"Rubystars" > wrote in message
gy.com...
>>
>> "Bill" > wrote in message
>> t...
>> > Is it still only one cow that has been found in the United States to
>have
>> > the disease? I mean, the article (what of it I read, it was very
>boring)
>> > made it sound as if the was some actual danger. Maybe thousands were
>> found
>> > to be infected and I didn't read about it yet?
>>
>> There's been speculation that many of the people who were diagnosed with
>> Alzheimer's in the US may have actually had CJD. I thought I read
>something
>> about the brains of people who had died from Alzheimer's being studied and
>> the ones doing it finding out they had died of CJD, but I can't remember
>> where the article is now.
>>
>> -Rubystars
>>
>There is no proof what so ever that those inflicted with Alzheimer's had in
>fact CJD. There was one cow found to be diseased. They said millions would
>die in England when they had their scare and they had thousands of diseased
>cattle. They had a couple of deaths there. More liberal media hocus pocus.
>We had one cow in Canada and not one illness. These **** wads in the media
>don't care how they sell papers or get ratings.
>
>Jeff
>
>
More than one hundred died.
Due to the incubation period, many more may, though the consensus is
that the disease in humans has peaked there.
This is not about liberal media.
This is not about compassionate conservatism.
It is about a horrible disease which we know little about.

beber > writes

>More than one hundred died.

Yes.

>Due to the incubation period, many more may, though the consensus is
>that the disease in humans has peaked there.

Peaked here.

>This is not about liberal media.
>This is not about compassionate conservatism.
>It is about a horrible disease which we know little about.

With a very very very low incidence.

Spend the same on organ transplants, cancer, heart disease and so on and
vastly more people would have had their lives extended.

--
Oz
This post is worth absolutely nothing and is probably fallacious.
DEMON address no longer in use.

http://www.prwatch.org/books/madcow.html

This guy had mad cow disease pegged in 1997. Download the entire book
for free. It is in pdf format.


On Mon, 05 Jan 2004 05:39:41 GMT, (C.W.) wrote:

>New York Times
>January 5, 2004
>
>Mad Cow Forces Beef Industry to Change Course
>By MICHAEL MOSS, RICHARD A. OPPEL JR. and SIMON ROMERO
>
>Jeffrey Behling, a dairy farmer in Washington State, used to burn the
>carcasses of his hobbled "downer" cattle until he found there was a
>market for their meat. Even so, selling damaged cows for human
>consumption never sat well with Mr. Behling, who in 2001 briefly had
>in his feedlot the Holstein cow identified last month as the downer
>with mad cow disease.
>
>"It's an absurd practice," Mr. Behling, 44, said in an interview.
>"Foolishness caused by maybe a certain amount of greed."
>
>The financial motive that drove the industry to defend practices like
>selling downers has been turned on its head by the discovery of mad
>cow disease. Now, in an attempt to rescue the market for American
>beef, the industry is being forced to accept regulation it has long
>fought.
>
>But some large American companies that process and sell beef had
>already abandoned those more controversial practices, which had been a
>rallying point for food safety advocates since mad cow disease
>appeared overseas nearly two decades ago. While a schism developed in
>the industry, the current crisis reveals how government regulators
>sided with companies that adhered to those methods of operation.
>
>When an animal rights group, Farm Sanctuary, and an individual,
>Michael Baur, sued the government to force a ban on using downer
>animals for food, government lawyers persuaded a federal judge to
>dismiss the case on the ground that mad cow disease, or bovine
>spongiform encephalopathy, had not appeared in the United States.
>
>"The threat of B.S.E. from downed livestock is not `real and
>immediate,' " the lawyers argued. "B.S.E. has never been found in the
>country's livestock, and there is no reasoned basis to expect that it
>ever will be considering the measures being taken against it." An
>appeals court reinstated the case on Dec. 16, 2003 - one week before
>the announcement that the disease had been discovered.
>
>For years, the industry had a simple strategy: Fight proposals that
>would crimp its ability to squeeze as much revenue as possible from
>each cow. The finances were compelling.
>
>At least 150,000 downer cattle - those who because of injury or
>illness cannot walk - were sold annually for human consumption for as
>much as a few hundred dollars apiece, extra money for cattlemen
>struggling with low prices. Food safety advocates warned that these
>cattle could carry disease, but the political power of the industry
>was evident in 2002 when its lobbyists helped defeat legislation
>banning the commercial slaughter of downer cattle even after it had
>been approved by the House and the Senate.
>
>In the 1990's, meatpackers bought machines that were able to strip a
>few extra pounds off carcasses while saving millions in labor costs.
>Critics tried to limit the use of the so-called advanced meat recovery
>systems, citing studies showing that the extra meat was sometimes
>laced with nerve tissues, where mad cow disease can incubate. But by
>one consultant's account several years ago, getting rid of the
>machines would mean a loss to the industry of more than $130 million a
>year.
>
>Now the money saved by fighting those changes is dwarfed by the
>billions the industry stands to lose unless it can convince consumers,
>especially overseas, that its beef is safe.
>
>"They played a high-risk, high-stakes game, and they lost their bet,"
>said Representative Gary L. Ackerman, a New York Democrat who pushed
>for a ban on the commercial slaughter of downer cows. "Now the
>perception among millions of people is that this product isn't safe,
>and they can't put Humpty Dumpty back together again."
>
>It Was the Best of Times
>
>As part of the campaign to restore consumer confidence, Agriculture
>Secretary Ann M. Veneman last week banned the use of downer cattle for
>meat and imposed further regulation on advanced recovery systems.
>Still, after the disease was detected last month, cattle prices
>plunged about 20 percent, while the $3.6 billion export market for
>beef, veal and variety meats largely evaporated, according to
>Cattle-Fax, an industry research firm. This came after United States
>beef prices had reached record highs, partly because of the
>restriction of imports from Canada after the mad cow outbreak there
>and the rising popularity of beef-friendly eating trends like the
>Atkins diet.
>
>"The last year had been heaven on earth for beef producers," said Don
>Stull, a co-author of "Slaughterhouse Blues," a study of the meat
>industry.
>
>But even in the best of times, meatpacking remains a cutthroat
>business. Steve Kay, the publisher of Cattle Buyers Weekly, estimates
>that profit margins rarely climb above 2 percent as companies deal
>with fluctuating cattle prices and relatively higher labor costs.
>
>Those financial constraints, which led meatpackers to harvest every
>last pound of meat, also caused consolidation in the industry.
>
>Five meatpackers now slaughter more than 80 percent of the nation's
>steers and heifers: Tyson, Excel, Swift, National Beef Packing and
>Smithfield. Bigger slaughterhouses have cut processing costs by as
>much as 40 percent, according to Agriculture Department data.
>Wholesale beef prices have declined almost every year since the early
>1980's.
>
>"We have the cheapest food supply in the world in terms of what we
>spend on food as part of our incomes," said Dean Cliver, a professor
>of population health at the University of California at Davis.
>
>Affordable beef has helped make for easy relations between the
>industry and federal regulators. According to the Center for Science
>in the Public Interest, a consumer group, a dozen top officials of the
>Department of Agriculture have worked or lobbied for the industry or
>for industry trade groups. They include Jim Moseley, the deputy
>agriculture secretary, who was managing director of Infinity Pork LLC,
>a hog farm; Dr. Chuck Lambert, the deputy under secretary for
>marketing and regulatory programs, who was chief economist of the
>National Cattlemen's Beef Association; and Mary Waters, the assistant
>secretary for Congressional relations, who was senior director and
>legislative counsel for ConAgra Foods. "It's not surprising the
>industry has so much influence given the number of U.S.D.A. officials
>who have been hired directly out of the meat industry," said Caroline
>Smith DeWaal, the center's food safety director.
>
>Alisa Harrison, the department's press secretary, said Secretary
>Veneman set policy by consulting a wide range of advisers and interest
>groups. "To make a sweeping charge that her decisions are influenced
>just because she has people from industry on her staff is very
>disingenuous," she said. She also noted that the department's top food
>safety official, Dr. Elsa A. Murano, had been director of the Center
>for Food Safety at Texas A&M University.
>
>Ms. Harrison also said the department had been attentive to the
>dangers of mad cow well before last month. "We were able to make the
>quick announcement that we did last week because a lot of the
>groundwork had been going on" since the discovery in May of a cow in
>Canada with the disease, she said. "These are things we have been
>looking at."
>
>But the debate over the advanced recovery system shows how the
>industry and regulators have resisted pressure from safety advocates
>since the disease appeared in Britain in 1986 and then spread to 18
>other European countries.
>
>New Process, New Concerns
>
>The technology, developed a decade ago, uses hydraulic pressure to
>force extra pounds off cow carcasses, producing filler for processed
>foods like hamburger, hot dogs and pizza toppings. Consumer groups
>initially complained that bone was getting into the advanced meat
>recovery product and argued that the product should not be labeled as
>beef. Then, in 1997, federal agriculture officials announced that they
>had found spinal cord tissue in some of the meat.
>
>Concerned that the nerve tissue could increase the public's risk of
>contracting mad cow disease, consumer groups asked the government to
>ban the technology, said Linda Golodner, president of the National
>Consumers League.
>
>But both the industry and government regulators resisted, arguing that
>the absence of the disease in the United States showed that there was
>no problem. "For us, so far, it's a non-public-health issue because we
>have no B.S.E.," Kaye Wachsmuth, who was then deputy administrator for
>public health science at the Agriculture Department, said in 1998.
>
>There were other arguments against the ban. The machinery replaced
>workers who could suffer crippling injury from trimming the carcasses
>by hand; one consultant study estimated that 394 workers would be
>injured if slaughterhouses returned to hand-trimming.
>
>Companies that sell the machines say such beef poses no threat. "The
>accepted science essentially states that there is not any relationship
>between B.S.E. and A.M.R.," said Harold T. Hodges, vice president of
>government relations and product quality for the BFD Corporation, one
>of the distributors of the machines. "We've never had an issue."
>
>Proponents of the technology argued that proper enforcement of the
>technology, rather than a ban, could prevent contamination.
>
>"It's always been a legitimate enforcement compliance issue to ensure
>that what you call beef is beef," said Robert Hibbert, a lawyer who
>represented meat processors that used the technology. "There is no
>justification for banning something on the basis that it has been
>removed by a machine rather than by hand with a knife."
>
>But some industry officials worried that not every processor used the
>machinery properly. At an American Meat Institute conference in
>Chicago in 1997, an executive of a major beef producer warned that
>applying too much pressure would force bone material into the beefy
>mush. In addition, the spinal cord has to be carefully removed before
>the cow carcass is fed to the machine.
>
>Second Thoughts
>
>As federal officials continued to find traces of nervous-system tissue
>in recovered beef, some companies determined that the potential cost
>of these practices outweighed the gains.
>
>With consumer groups pressing for a boycott of meat produced using
>advanced recovery technology, a host of restaurants and producers
>announced they were advanced meat recovery free, including General
>Mills and McDonald's, which swore off downer-cow meat as well.
>
>In a fact sheet, McDonald's says, "These policies meet or exceed all
>government requirements, and have been reviewed by our international
>scientific council on B.S.E., made up of renowned experts in this
>field."
>
>Meanwhile, some slaughterhouses had other reasons to stop using the
>machines. In late 2002, Shapiro Packing, a processor in Augusta, Ga.,
>produced tainted beef using the machinery system. The contaminated
>material was destroyed, but the company had to spend a lot of money to
>shore up its operation, said Dane Bernard, vice president for food
>safety at Keystone Foods, which manages Shapiro Packing.
>
>Additional workers were placed on the line to ensure that the
>carcasses were properly stripped of their spinal cords, and the
>company's inspections became nearly continuous, Mr. Bernard said. The
>new measures increased expenses while big beef buyers were boasting
>that their food was not processed using advanced meat-recovery
>systems. So last summer, Shapiro mothballed its machinery and returned
>to manual trimming.
>
>"I can't say we had a crystal ball," Mr. Bernard said. "Sometimes it's
>better to be lucky than good."
>
>The discovery of mad cow disease is likely to increase the debate over
>the technology. Dr. Wachsmuth, the agriculture official who defended
>the technology in 1998, said in an interview on Saturday that the
>absence of the disease had been an important factor in that defense.
>"The mere threat of it wasn't enough," said Dr. Wachsmuth, who is now
>retired. "Now that we do have B.S.E., maybe it should be revisited."
>
>Dan Murphy, a spokesman for the American Meat Institute, the
>meatpackers' trade group, said the number of processors using the
>technology had recently fallen to fewer than 30 from 35. He said that
>the machines once produced several hundred million pounds of meat a
>year, but that a survey in late 2002 found the number had dropped to
>45 million.
>
>Even so, he said, "We're confident that this is a safe, wholesome
>product that doesn't trigger any concern or carry any danger in its
>use." But he acknowledged that some members of the association were
>less supportive: "There are companies that would just as soon we said
>nothing."
>
>In her announcement last week, Secretary Veneman imposed regulations
>intended to further keep unwanted tissue from the food supply, but she
>stopped short of a ban on the technology.
>
>Mr. Murphy, the industry spokesman, acknowledged that a further review
>of the technology was possible, especially if there is pressure from
>overseas trading partners. "Nobody is going to give up $1.2 billion in
>beef trade for a handful of A.M.R.," he said.
>
>In Washington State, Mr. Behling, the onetime holder of the diseased
>cow, said that in the days since the discovery of mad cow, the
>industry has learned that lesson in global economics. Mr. Behling, who
>has a few thousand cows in his operation, said that when the
>occasional downer cow appeared, a slaughterer would drive out to his
>farm with a hoist and give him $100 for the hobbled animal.
>
>But in the wake of the mad cow crisis, he said, "My feeling is that
>any money that dairy farmers might have made from downer cows, they
>gave it all back this week."
>
>================================================= =======
>

C.W. saw Sally selling seashells by the seashore and told us all about
it on Mon, 05 Jan 2004 05:39:41 GMT:

I'm not going to say anything about Mad Cows, because it's such a rare
disease that I don't think we need to panic... but the idea of eating
sick animals is revolting. It's enough to make me want to evict beef
from my diet (I hate the taste and only eat it because my family
insists that it's 'good for you' and that I need the iron...) It's
just GROSS...

~Karen AKA Kajikit

Nobody outstubborns a cat...

Visit my webpage: http://www.kajikitscorner.com
Allergyfree Eating Recipe Swap: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Allergyfree_Eating
Ample Aussies Mailing List: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ampleaussies/

some useful facts on the UK BSE epidemic and mo

http://www.defra.gov.uk/animalh/bse/...un02/order.pdf

NB Watch out for linewrap.

--
Oz
This post is worth absolutely nothing and is probably fallacious.
DEMON address no longer in use.

Oz > writes
>some useful facts on the UK BSE epidemic and mo

[use monopitched font to view properly]


================
From:
http://www.defra.gov.uk/animalh/bse/...un02/order.pdf
UK cattle removed from the human food chain due BSE

Year BSE cases OTMs ScS offspring
Pre 1988 727 -
1988 2180 - - -
1989 7133 - - -
1990 14181 - - -
1991 25026 - - -
1992 36680 - - -
1993 34370 - - -
1994 23943 - - -
1995 14301 - - -
1996 8013 1156975 - -
1997 4309 848279 55465 -
1998 3179 891195 18956 1532
1999 2254 954766 1413 5844
2000 1311 963381 24 2559
2001 781 598601 0 1427
2002* 237 361257 0 1489
Total 178625 5774454** 75858 12851

OTMS = Over thirty months scheme
ScS = Selective cull scheme
offsping = offspring cull scheme

=====================

SE Diagnoses in Exotic Species

KUDU 6
GEMSBOK 1
NYALA 1
ORYX 2
ELAND 6
CHEETAH 5
PUMA 3
TIGER 3
OCELOT 3
BISON 1
ANKOLE COW 2
LION 4

Cheetah total excludes one in Australia and one in the Republic of Ireland
(both of these were litter mates born in GB), and another two in France which
were also born in GB.

===================

SE Diagnoses in Domestic Cats
Year Number of cases
1990 12
1991 12
1992 10
1993 11
1994 16
1995 8
1996 6
1997 6
1998 4
1999 2
2000 1
2001 1

=================

UK cases of all CJD's. [From: http://www.cjd.ed.ac.uk/figures.htm]

Year Spor Iatro Fam GSS vCJD Total
Deaths
1990 28 5 0 0 - 33
1991 32 1 3 0 - 36
1992 45 2 5 1 - 53
1993 37 4 3 2 - 46
1994 53 1 4 3 - 61
1995 35 4 2 3 3 47
1996 40 4 2 4 10 60
1997 60 6 4 1 10 81
1998 63 3 4 1 18 89
1999 62 6 2 0 15 85
2000 49 1 2 1 28 81
2001 57 3 3 2 20 85
2002 73 0 4 1 17 95
2003* 53 4 1 1 16 75

Total 687 44 39 20 137 927

Spor = Sporadic
Iatro = Iatrogenic
Fam = Familial
GSS = Another inherited TE
*To 1st dec 2003

--
Oz
This post is worth absolutely nothing and is probably fallacious.
DEMON address no longer in use.

C.W. > wrote:
>"Foolishness caused by maybe a certain amount of greed."

The organizing principle of capitalism.

--Blair
"No maybe about it."