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Mad Cow News

October 4

New animal feed rules still leave consumers at risk

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) proposed regulations governing animal feed - critical to preventing the spread of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) - are still too weak to protect consumers.
The proposed rules would ban the use of some cattle tissues in animal feed in an attempt to limit the potential for cross-contamination during feed production or the potential for transmitting BSE through mistakenly feeding cattle food intended for other animals. Specifically, the following would be banned: the brains and spinal cords of cattle over 30 months of age, the brains and spinal cords from cattle that have not been inspected and approved for human consumption, and all tissues from cattle that have not been inspected and approved for human consumption if the brain and spinal cord are not removed. But the FDA would still allow the brain and spinal cord from younger cattle, as well as other nervous system tissues from all cattle to be used in animal feed.
This proposal does not live up to the promise the FDA made to American consumers on Jan. 26, 2004, when the agency announced that it was going to take immediate action to strengthen the firewalls against BSE. At the time, Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson stated: "Small as the risk may already be, this is the time to make sure the public is protected to the greatest extent possible."

October 5

FDA mad cow proposal fails to fully protect consumers: after years of delay the proposed rule ignores basic steps recommended by experts

Chicago, IL. After spending over two and half years considering options to reduce the spread of Mad Cow through feed, the Food and Drug Administration failed to include basic steps recommended by experts in its proposed rule published today. The rule fails to close significant gaps in the ruminant to ruminant feed ban that were left open when first put in place in 1997, according to Food Animal Concerns Trust (FACT), a consumer group based in Chicago. The new rule does not prohibit the feeding of poultry litter to cattle even though research has shown that meat and bone meal, the cause of the spread of Mad Cow, is easily detected in litter. The new rule also allows feed manufacturers to produce, store and transport cattle feed with the same equipment as other animal feed even though it is impossible to consistently clean equipment and storage facilities well enough to remove all infectivity. Cleanout is impossible because of the extremely small amount of material that can lead to infection. A single ounce of brain tissue from an infected cow has enough material to cause sickness in around 3000 other cattle if given in feed.

October 5

T-bone steaks to make triumphant return to EU menus

The European Union was cited as agreeing on Wednesday to allow T-bone steaks, including Italy's famous Fiorentina, back into Europe's restaurants, lifting a four-year ban imposed over mad cow disease fears.
The story says that sales of beef containing the backbone of animals aged over 12 months were banned in 2001 in many European countries to reduce the risk of catching the human equivalent of BSE, mad cow disease. This low age limit effectively outlawed T-bone steaks.
EU veterinary experts meeting in Brussels have now raised that limit to 24 months, meaning that T-bones are likely be back on sale in butchers' shops across Europe by the end of the year.

October 10

Suburban mom a BSE crusader

Janet Skarbek's life was, according to this story, forever altered when she read the obituary of an acquaintance in June 2003.
A 56-year-old woman who had worked with Skarbek's mother at the Garden State Park racetrack near Philadelphia had died of Creutzfeldt-Jakob brain disease, what this story calls the human version of mad cow disease. Barely three years earlier, a 29-year-old accountant at the Cherry Hill track had died of the same rare, always fatal disease.
Skarbek was cited as wondering, how could two of just 100 administrative employees at the track be felled by a neurological disease health officials say kills just one in a million people each year, usually after age 60?

October 14

Mad cow type diseases may spread in urine-study

Swiss researchers were cited as reporting on Thursday that the agent that causes mad cow disease, scrapie and chronic wasting disease in deer and elk may sometimes be spread through urine.
Adriano Aguzzi of the University Hospital of Zurich and colleagues were quoted as writing in their report, published in the journal Science, that, "We tested whether chronic inflammatory kidney disorders would trigger excretion of prion infectivity into urine."

October 17

9 Cases of Brain-Wasting Disease in Idaho

From the moment Joan Kingsford first saw her husband stagger in his welding shop, she wanted two things: His recovery and to know what made him sick.

She got neither. Alvin Kingsford, 72, died recently of suspected sporadic Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, the fatal brain-wasting illness. The disease can be conclusively diagnosed only with an autopsy, which did not take place.

State and federal health officials are trying to get to the bottom of nine reported cases of suspected sporadic CJD in Idaho this year. Sporadic, or naturally occurring, CJD differs from the permutation dubbed variant CJD, which is caused by eating mad-cow-tainted beef and has killed at least 180 people in the United Kingdom and continental Europe since the 1990s.

"One thing is very clear in Idaho _ the number seems to be higher than the number reported in previous years," said Dr. Ermias Belay, a CJD expert with the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. "So far, the investigations have not found any evidence of any exposure that might be common among the cases."

Normally, sporadic CJD only strikes about one person in a million each year, with an average of just 300 cases per year in the United States, or just over one case a year in Idaho. Over the past two decades, the most cases reported in Idaho in a single year has been three.

Until this year.

Of the nine suspected cases reported so far in 2005, three tested positive for an infectious disease of the nervous system, though more tests are pending to determine if the fatal illness was in fact sporadic CJD. Four apparent victims were buried without autopsies. Two suspected cases tested negative.

Still, federal and state health officials are stopping just short of calling the Idaho cases a "cluster," waiting for final test results from the victims who got autopsies.

The best tool of investigators to pin down the diagnosis _ the autopsy _ is sometimes hard to get, said Tom Shanahan with the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare.

Pathologists are often reluctant to perform the procedures, the cost of an autopsy can be high and some families are reluctant to give their consent, officials say.

Joan Kingsford wanted an autopsy done on her husband, but no mortician in the area would agree to handle Alvin's body after his brain cavity had been opened. They feared they would catch the rare disease, Kingsford said.

October 19

Beef shipments may resume soon: Korea: Government officials hope that Korea will begin importing U.S. beef by the end of the year

Korea will decide between the end of this month and early November on whether to resume U.S. beef imports now that Seoul has received its requested information, a government official said, according the Korea Herald newspaper. "The livestock quarantine panel is expected to meet around the end of this month or early November after it has examined all the information related to mad cow cases that Seoul requested from Washington," Kim Chang-seob, director of the Animal Health Division, Livestock Bureau at the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, said.
Korea banned U.S. beef imports in December 2003 when a case of the brain-wasting illness bovine spongiform encephalopathy was discovered in a Washington-state cow. A second BSE-infected cow was found in June.

October 20

Mad cow

Officials were cited as saying Thursday that Thailand is lifting a mad cow disease-related ban on U.S. beef.
Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns was cited as saying it is time for other Asian markets, particularly Japan, once the biggest customer of U.S. beef, to follow, adding, "There is no justifiable reason for borders to be closed to U.S. beef."
U.S. Trade Representative Rob Portman was cited as saying the move reflects the relationship the U.S. and Thailand are trying to strengthen through a free trade agreement.

October 24

Virus may cause BSE, vCJD and related diseases

Research conducted by scientists in the United States and Japan reached the controversial conclusion that a virus may be responsible for bovine spongiform encephalopathy and the human version, variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, and that injection of a mild dose of vCJD may immunize humans against the full-blown disease.
Laura Manuelidis, a neurologist at Yale University, was co-author of the study, which is published in the latest issue of the journal Science. The researchers injected mice with low levels of infected material, and found this protected cells from the more dangerous strain, Manuelidis said.

October 28

Case of mad cow disease found in Austrian slaughterhouse

Veterinary officials were cited as saying Friday that a case of mad cow disease was found in a slaughterhouse in Salzburg in central Austria.
Authorities put into action emergency measures, closing the slaughterhouse, killing the animals the infected beast had been with in its stable and then cleaning the stable with disinfectant.
The slaughterhouse was then reopened.

October 31

Japanese scientists recommend end to US beef import ban

Japanese scientists Monday were cited as recommending lifting a two-year ban on US and Canadian beef imports imposed over mad cow disease fears in a major step to ending a bitter trade dispute between Tokyo and Washington.
The government-appointed panel indicated the imports could resume in December. It said there was little risk of mad cow disease in beef from young US and Canadian cattle if dangerous body parts were taken out.
Yasuhiro Yoshikawa, chairman of the committee, was quoted as telling reporters, "If these conditions are maintained, the risk is very slim. Those who want to buy it (North American beef) can buy it. If people don't want to buy it then they don't have to."
With the green light from scientists, the only hurdles to resuming beef imports are public hearings and final government approval—a process that takes about four weeks.
Amid polls showing that most Japanese still do not trust US beef, the new agriculture minister said he would try to dispel consumers' worries.

November 2

Americans may have eaten mad cow: Offspring of infected Texas cow suspected of reaching human food supply

Researchers hunting the herd linked to the first U.S. case of mad cow disease were cited as finding that most of the animals were slaughtered—and possibly in the human food supply—even before the government probe began.
The federal and state governments closed an investigation into the infected cow, which was raised at an unidentified Texas ranch, at the end of August.
But the Dallas Morning News obtained details about the search for the 413 cows and calves on Tuesday under a Texas Open Records request. About 350 of them, or roughly 85 per cent, were sent for slaughter.
The story says that the reports, compiled for the Texas Animal Health Commission by a government employee, demonstrate how problematic it was to track the herd mates and progeny of a diseased cow.

November 9

Report finds flaws in mad cow test program

The U.S. Government Accountability Office was cited as issuing a Wednesday that found testing is too slow at times to prevent cattle from eating feed that might be contaminated, just one flaw in a program to help stop mad cow disease from spreading.
Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, who sought the report, was cited as saying the feed safeguards are the most important firewall against mad cow disease, adding, "If FDA's testing program is not catching violations, and catching them in time, that needs to be corrected immediately."

November 12

U.S. will maintain higher mad cow testing

U.S. Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns was cited as saying the government plans to maintain indefinitely its faster level of testing for mad cow disease, rather than scaling back testing in December as originally envisioned, about 1,000 cattle a day, adding, "I have just been very reluctant to even set a date as to when we would bring that to a close. It's safe to say the enhanced surveillance is going to extend beyond the end of December."
Johanns was further cited as saying his decision is not about Japan, which bought more American beef than any other foreign customer until the U.S. discovered its first case of mad cow disease, and that he wants to make sure testing represents all regions of the country and that healthy animals are tested.

November 17

Mad cow curbs on Canada may end

The Bush administration hopes to lift remaining mad cow disease-related restrictions on Canadian cattle within the next year, the Agriculture Department said Wednesday.

The restrictions, in place since Canada discovered its first case of the disease in 2003, were eased earlier this year to allow younger cattle to enter the United States.

November 21

Brit-born Texan diagnosed with vCJD

A 30-year-old British male living in Houston is believed to be the second victim of variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, the human form of bovine spongiform encephalopathy, in the United States.
The victim moved to Houston in 2001 to work for Shell Oil after spending most of his life in Great Britain. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention planned to issue a report with more detail over the weekend.
The victim apparently alarmed relatives during phone calls home this year with changes in his personality. An MRI and examination resulted in the diagnosis of probable vCJD. According to his family, the victim has no history of risk factors such as surgery, blood transfusions or IV drug use during his time in Texas.
While it appears that he was exposed to the disease while living in the United Kingdom, he will be considered a U.S. victim for purposes of reporting the disease.