MAD COW DISEASE IS OUT THERE!    STAY INFORMED!

( Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy - BSE )

Sunday, 31 December 2000 11:13 (ET)

Belgium prepares for mad cow disease in 2001

Belgium prepares for mad cow disease in 2001 By DOUGLAS BAKSHIAN LUXEMBOURG, Dec. 31 (UPI) -- Europe's battle against mad cow disease enters a new phase in 2001 with massive measures to deal with the crisis. The New Year will be an expensive and busy one for the European Union's farming community. Starting in January E.U. agriculture ministers have imposed a six-month ban on meat and bone meal in livestock feed. Such material is suspected of causing mad cow disease, also known as BSE. E.U. nations are also launching a major testing program for the disease. Starting in January EU states will begin testing cattle over 30-months-old in a risk category - those showing symptoms of the disease or subject to emergency slaughter. In July, the program will expand massively when tests will be done on all cattle over 30-months-old destined for the food chain. This will mean six to seven million tests per year. Altogether the measures will cost billions of dollars, but E.U. Farm Commissioner Franz Fischler in December said the expense is worth it. "What we would like to know now is that we have a total overview and a 100 percent clarification of what happens in our member states. Because this then brings us ahead of all the other countries in the world because there are many countries in the world which never tested the question of BSE." The 15-nation European Union is trying to restore public confidence in beef following a rash of new cases of mad cow disease. The latest crisis began after France reported at least 100 new cases in 2000 and it was discovered that some potentially infected meat had reach French supermarkets. Germany and Spain have also reported their first-ever cases. -- Copyright 2000 by United Press International. All rights reserved.

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Sunday, 31 December 2000 3:35 (ET)

China implements ban on EU animal feed

China implements ban on EU animal feed BEIJING, Dec. 31 (UPI) - China Saturday formally renewed its ban on the importation of any animal-based feed from any EU country, as the country's precaution against the spread of the so-called Mad Cow disease entered a second decade, the Xinhua news agency reported. The Chinese Ministry of Agriculture and other agencies issued a joint order setting regulations that block animal feed product imports from the European Union. The order emphasized "that all departments concerned should attach great importance to the control of animal feed products and take rigorous measures to prevent the spread of such epidemics as the 'Mad Cow Disease.'" Such orders have been promulgated since 1990.

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Mad U.S. Cows?

U.S. Public Health Officials Are Ignorant About Mad Cow Type Diseases

By Nicholas Regush

June 23 — Unfortunately, we have a false sense of security that there is actually a lot of solid knowledge "out there" about mad cow disease and forms of its human version known as Creutzfeldt-Jacob disease (CJD).

But those officials who call themselves the keepers of the Public Health actually do not know too much about these disorders.

Yet in the meantime, IN PUBLIC HEALTH WE TRUST. Public Health is a sprawling organism consisting of a mixture of sometimes competing government health agencies, advisory panels guided by "expert" government and non-government scientists, and politicians trying to test which way the wind is blowing in order to stay elected.

Questionable Public Health

When it comes to mad cow and CJD, Public Health has more or less decided that everything is pretty well under control in this country — and why shouldn't it be, since the United States always knows how to do things best.

Well, I have a different view of the expert opinion.

CJD is a fatal neurodegenerative nightmare. It results in jerky movements, dementia, and sometimes a brain with holes that can look like Swiss cheese. It is thought to be very rare, but some scientists, including pathologist Dr. Laura Manuelidis of Yale, suspect that some people who die with an Alzheimer's diagnosis really have CJD.

The problem is that autopsies are rarely done on these patients and some of the symptoms of Alzheimer's can be similar to CJD. Her detailed pathology studies have revealed CJD in several patients diagnosed with Alzheimer's.

So what is the relationship between mad cow disease and CJD? Mad cow disease hit Britain in 1986 and has been linked to a new form of CJD, which has since killed 56 people.

Prions or Microbes or Pesticides?

It is generally claimed the main culprit behind these animal and human diseases is a transmissible protein called a "prion" that can make protein in normal cells mutate. Dig a little deeper into the medical literature and you will quickly discover that some scientists — granted, a minority — worry a lot about the very notion of a prion because it is such a new concept. Some suspect that some microbe may instead be involved in mad cow and forms of CJD.

But why stop there? You may wish to consider the theory proposed by British dairy farmer Mark Purdey, who believes that Phosnet, a chemical that contains an organophosphate pesticide, is involved in the protein mutations that lead to mad cow. In other words, according to this theory, mad cow is first and foremost a toxic condition and not an infection transmitted via contaminated feed as is claimed by most scientists.

It's noteworthy that Phosnet has been used almost exclusively in Britain — and by government decree — to fight off a fly that hounds cattle. There was no sign of mad cow before Phosnet began to be used widely by British farmers.

Purdy has been arguing his case ever since mad cow appeared in Britain. His cows reared on the so-called "contaminated" feed containing ground-up brains of sheep and cows did not develop mad cow disease. Relying on detailed records of his farming practices, he reasoned that his cows were spared because his organic approach excluded the use of Phosnet. And organophosphates are known to be toxic to the brain and capable of causing mad cow-type brain lesions.

No, Purdey is definitely not a nutter, but someone who has carefully worked out some of the details of this theory and has published his views in several reputable journals, including Medical Hypothesis.

Purdey's publications and his testimony before the British inquiry into mad cow disease deserve some detailed research attention. Of course, the scientific titans of mad cow, notably those holding tight to the contaminated feed theory, look down on such challenges.

Little Alternative Hypothesis Discussion

Here in North America where Public Health claims there is no mad cow disease, there is little discussion about how some pesticides might potentially cause mad cow like illnesses — and perhaps human versions as well. Either you agree with the prion theory or you find yourself a member of a minority that still believes a microbe is involved. Purdey's claims are not even on the official discussion table. At least I've never heard anyone from Public Health in this country refer to Purdey's theory in relation to mad cow disease.

Here are some questions for you and Public Health in this country to consider:

• Are there a variety of possible forms of what is being called "mad cow disease"? Will some of these neurological forms eventually be tied to environmental triggers, such as pesticides?

•Are pesticides or other environmental triggers involved in the so-called "downer cow" phenomenon in this country (sick animals that basically drop)? Public Health takes the position that these cows, which can't stand, have a variety of underlying medical problems unrelated to mad cow disease.

•What is the trigger for the mad cow like chronic wasting disease in deer and elk found in several western states? It, for example, is assumed that the infection can spread via scrapie, now regarded as a prion disease that could be transmitted from infected sheep. Or is there an environmental trigger like a chemical involved?

•Is it possible that some Alzheimer's diagnoses (done without autopsies) are actually closer to a form of CJD that isn't triggered solely by prions or by some microbe but could be triggered by pesticides?

Get the feeling that we may know much too little about mad cow disease and CJD? That's what I think.

http://more.abcnews.go.com/sections/living/SecondOpinion/secondopinion_89.html

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Cowed By Beef?

European Scientists: Very Slight Chance Mad Cow Disease May Be in United States

By Nicholas Regush

Cattle herded for delivery to a slaughterhouse where they were destroyed under the British government program to remove cattle from herds where evidence of "Mad Cow Disease" was found.

June 16 — How do you like your thymus gland from a bovine cooked? Chewy? Crisp? Dark sauce? Light sauce? A hint of mint? In culinary circles, this dish is called "sweetbreads," and you can discover the taste of this "delicacy" in many fine restaurants.

As a friend was recently wolfing down the apparently scrumptious organ tissue with peculiar zest, one of my very own organs, the brain, naturally fertile with inquisitive nerve cells suddenly ablaze, lurched to a heady consideration about what is known (or unknown) about mad cow disease in the United States.

Mad cow is a neurodegenerative disorder in cattle that can cause holes in the brain.Yes holes. Like Swiss cheese.

Beef Killed

In Britain, probably only the very brave still hanker for inventive dishes of brain and organ foods from cattle. Many won't any longer even eat any form of beef. That's because 56 people in Britain have thus far died of a human version of mad cow disease because they were exposed to contaminated beef organs.

The first deadly cases of the brain-destroying human disease, known as a form of Creutzfeldt-Jacob Disease, were detected in 1996, eight years after mad cow disease became a household term in Britain, forcing the slaughter of at least four million cattle.

British beef has now been deemed by the European Commission to be as safe as any other beef. But Britain now bans the use of cattle remains in cattle feed, which was a route for the spread of mad cow disease.

It's generally thought the cause of these diseases is a transmissible protein called a "prion," which can make proteins in normal cells mutate. Some researchers, including Yale Medical School pathologist Dr. Laura Manuelidis, question this viewpoint and believe some type of microbe may be involved in causing the neurological destruction.

The Disease is Spreading

However complex the cause of mad cow — and I suspect it will turn out to be more complex than the prion-only based view — one thing is clear: The disease is spreading across Europe. It has been detected in cows in France, Portugal, Switzerland, Belgium, the Netherlands, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg and Denmark.

Scientists advising the European Commission issued a draft report about mad cow disease and placed it on the Web earlier this month. Their findings won't warm the cockles of beef-eaters in Europe and may even reduce the enthusiasm for beef in the United States. The scientists have warned that mad cow disease may be harbored in some cattle even in those countries that deny the existence of mad cow disease.

Germany, Italy and Spain are also likely to be "infected," according to the Commission report, which details a two-year probe into all possible factors that could spread mad cow disease. For example, it examined the importation of cattle and meat and bone meal from Britain and other mad-cow infected countries and tried to calculate how effective control measures might be.

Small Chance of Infection in America

The report concludes ominously that while infection is "unlikely" in six other European nations, as well as in Canada, Australia and the United States, it "cannot be excluded." These countries contend there is no evidence of the disease in their cattle herds, but the Commission believes surveillance is not active enough to warrant total confidence that mad cow disease does not exist.

The United States, for example, has imported 126 cattle and 44 tons of bone meal from Britain, but slack American monitoring might not have picked up cases to determine whether infected beef, in fact, landed in this country.

As for bone meal, there is always the remote possibility that Americans fertilizing gardens with the substance could infect humans through inhalation, although there is no evidence that this has occurred.

Nations throughout the world can comment on the draft report and the Commission will ultimately issue a final report.

So what might this all suggest for my cow-thymus-munching friend? Or for all you beef-eaters out there?

Be aware that besides the unimpressive monitoring that goes on in the United States for mad cow, public health officials are looking for a type of the disease that has been occurring in Europe. A new form of the disease could show up in the United States.

Next week, we'll look at some of the intriguing issues surrounding this topic that are getting overlooked.

http://more.abcnews.go.com/sections/living/SecondOpinion/secondopinion_88.html

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Saturday 6 January 2001 - CJD - Germans Suspect New Link Between Feed, 'Mad Cow'

By Peter Finn

Animal Fat in Milk Fed to Calves May Have Caused Outbreak

BERLIN, Jan. 5 -- As two more suspected cases of "Mad Cow" disease were discovered in Germany, the government today unveiled emergency plans to try to cope with the bewildering and growing crisis . At the same time, investigators began to focus on a familiar but newly garbed suspect for the outbreak in Germany, which had long been believed to be free of the disease.

Investigators have long believed that the disease can spread through the feeding to cattle of meat and bone meal from infected cattle. But, increasingly, officials here are looking at fat produced from carcasses and used to supplement milk fed to calves .

Germany had banned the feeding of meat and bone meal to cattle in 1994 but continued to allow its use for pigs and poultry, and, through dietary supplements, for calves, a process that was not believed to risk contamination. The fat supplement was a low-cost substitute for the richer fat in cows' milk, which was removed to make butter.

The milk theory is just a theory, as are all attempts to determine the cause of the disease. But if the theory is borne out, it will constitute the latest discovery of an unsafe practice involving the feeding of carcass byproducts to grass-eating animals despite serious doubts Britain raised about the practice 12 years ago. Ninety-one people -- 87 in Britain, three in France and one in Ireland -- are believed to have died from a brain disease whose origin lay in contaminated meat.

The cattle's disease, formally called Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy, first surfaced in Britain in 1986, leading to a countrywide breakout that infected 180,000 head of cattle. Close to 4.8 million cows eventually were destroyed to stem the epidemic.

The disease has since spread across Europe, although in nowhere near the same numbers, with scattered cases confirmed in France, Ireland, Portugal, Switzerland, the Netherlands and Spain as well as Germany. Officials warn that it may yet appear in other major agricultural countries such as Italy and Poland, which have not begun widespread testing for the disease. Two more cases also surfaced in Spain this week.

News of the disease has caused panic in several European countries. Governments have pulled certain beef products from the market, and many people have stopped buying beef altogether.

"We don't know where it's coming from," said Peter Harry Carstensen, a member of the opposition Christian Democratic Union who sits on the German Parliament's agriculture committee. "And if you don't know where it's coming from, all your efforts are like shooting a cannon at a little bird in the sky."

German Agriculture Minister Karl-Heinz Funke today unveiled a plan calling for all 15 countries of the European Union to ban animal feed that contains animal proteins and fats. He also endorsed tougher food-safety inspections, more government money for food-safety research and more organic cattle-raising.

Health Minister Andrea Fischer introduced a proposal to lower the age of beef cattle to undergo mandatory testing to 24 months from 30 months. This follows a diagnosis of the disease in a 28-month-old cow in late December.

Both Funke and Fischer brought their proposals before an emergency meeting of parliamentary committees on health and agriculture, which are looking to restore shattered consumer confidence in beef -- concern that is spreading to other meats now that the government has begun testing sheep for the disease.

While the cause of the outbreak is difficult to pinpoint, blame is easy to come by. Funke, under pressure to resign, accused Germany's states of resisting early testing because they mistakenly believed the country was free of the disease.

The European Union and the German opposition accused Funke of being asleep at the wheel. And the government, in response, said the opposition didn't do enough to protect Germany's cattle when it was in power and the British scare was at its height.

"We all underestimated the dangers," said Gerd Sonnleitner, president of the German Farmers' Association. "We must have a [meat and bone meal] ban not just in Germany but in all of Europe."

The EU has banned the meal for six months, but Germany and Finland would like the ban to be permanent. A total ban, which looks increasingly likely, would cost the European Union billions in disposal costs and in losses to industries that depend on beef.

meat and bone meal is basically the ground-up detritus of everything left over after a cow or steer has been turned into food and leather and other everyday items, including pharmaceuticals and beauty products.

Britain banned the feeding of such meal to cattle in 1988, but continued to export it to countries such as France and Ireland, the two other places where infection apparently jumped to humans in the form of variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease.

Why countries continued to import the meal from Britain, despite a ban on British beef in some cases, is the subject of acrimonious debate and second-guessing across Europe.

Between 1988 and 1994, Britain exported 31,413 tons of meat and bone meal, according to a British report. The report noted that some British officials felt this was a moral failure.

"We believe that the government should have been anxious to ensure that the misfortune that we were suffering in the United Kingdom was not shared by our neighbors," said a British report published last year on the Mad Cow epidemic. "The evidence suggests to us that the only reliable way of protecting foreign countries from the risk of the incorporation of British [meat and bone meal] in their cattle feed would have been to prohibit its export."

Nonetheless, infected meal from Britain does not appear to explain the German problem, illustrating that very little is known about the disease -- its origins, its mechanism of transmission and its implications for humans who have consumed meat infected with the prion proteins that appear to cause it. Estimates of the number of people who could contract Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in Europe range from hundreds to tens of thousands.

Germany did not import British meal . It produced its own meal with added safety measures, including treating the product at much higher temperatures, according to German officials. Moreover, German cattle farmers did not use the product widely; it was mostly exported or fed to pigs and poultry.

But the ban on British meal, as officials now realize, does not preclude the possibility that some cattle were fed inadvertently with the material or that feed machines were somehow contaminated by it. A peppercorn-size piece of meal can be infectious, according to the British report.

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Friday January 5, 08:29 AM

Australia bans beef product imports from Europe

By Michael Byrnes

SYDNEY (Reuters) - Australia has extended an import ban on British beef products to more than two dozen European countries following outbreaks of "mad cow" disease.

The Australian authorities have also advised retailers in Australia and New Zealand to remove all European beef products from their shelves.

Agriculture Minister Warren Truss said the decision was made to protect Australia's status as a country free of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), or mad cow disease.

Australia barred British beef and by-products in 1996 as concerns mounted that mad cow disease could be linked to the variant Creutzfeldt Jakob disease, which affects people.

The extension of the ban, which takes effect on January 8, includes Denmark, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands and Spain, according to a statement from the Department of Health and Aged Care.

Also affected were East European and Scandinavian nations.

Interim measures announced by the Australian and New Zealand governments on Friday include advice to retailers to voluntarily withdraw beef products from designated countries in Europe, as well as the suspension of imports from those countries, the Australia New Zealand Food Authority (ANZFA) said.

"We have today written to major retail organisations asking them to identify processed beef products from Europe and to remove them from shelves as soon as possible as a precaution," ANZFA managing director Ian Lindenmayer said in a statement.

ANZFA will examine amendments to the Australia New Zealand Food Standards Code to ensure that imported beef and beef products were free from BSE, he said.

The amendment would require exporting countries to certify that their beef products were free from BSE.

ADVICE TO CONSUMERS

In the meantime, ANZFA was recommending that consumers check labels on any imported food they had and discard corned beef, luncheon meat, frankfurters and other products which contained beef with a European country of origin, he said.

There was however only a very small likelihood that European beef products now in Australian supermarkets and kitchens were contaminated with BSE, Lindenmayer added.

"The measures announced today will further protect Australia's BSE-free status in the eyes of our international trading partners, many of whom import Australian beef," Truss said.

BSE is a brain wasting disease which first appeared in Britain. The European Union and other countries have since banned the use of all animal-based feeds for livestock, believed by scientists to be the main medium by which BSE is transmitted to cattle. China recently banned EU meat-based animal feeds.

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Friday January 5, 01:55 PM

BSE checks find banned material in carcasses

LONDON (Reuters) - Veterinarians monitoring Britain's tough anti-BSE measures found three cases last year of banned material in cattle and sheep carcasses which had been passed fit to eat, a national food safety watchdog said on Friday.

The Food Standards Agency said sections of spinal cord, one of the most potentially infective parts of cattle even if signs of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) are not visible, was discovered in two cows and one sheep carcass.

Anti-BSE measures have been applied to sheep because of the theoretical risk that, like cattle, they too could be infected with "mad cow" disease.

A spokesman for the agency said the cases were the only such incidents in Britain since 1996, when the probable link between BSE and the brain wasting disorder variant Creutzfeldt-Jacob Disease (vCJD) in humans was revealed.

"Investigations into the breaches show these are isolated incidents," he said. "In each of the cases there was no risk because the carcasses did not enter the food chain."

Other safety measures, such as the banning of meat and bone meal in cattle feed and rules preventing cattle over 30 months old getting into the food chain, greatly reduced the risk to humans, he added.

Over 80 people have died of vCJD in Britain and two have died in France. Cases of BSE, which surfaced in Britain in 1986, have now been confirmed in France, Ireland, Portugal, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Germany and Spain.

The Guardian newspaper quoted representatives of British victims as saying the breaches showed there was no room for complacency.

"I have always thought there was scope for BSE-infected material to enter food and this goes to show that any attempt to let the industry regulate itself would be beyond belief," a victims' spokesman, Malcolm Tibbert, told the paper.

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Friday January 5, 09:22 AM

Government orders clean up to check CJD risk

As a "precautionary" measure against the spread of variant CJD - the human form of "mad cow disease" - the Government is to invest £200 million into the modernisation of decontamination and sterilisation facilities within the NHS.

This latest stage of the Department of Health's strategy to minimise the threat from CJD will underpin a major overhaul to provide the NHS with the most up-to-date decontamination services, ministers say. It will modernise sterile service departments, providing new fully automated state-of-the-art sterilisers and washer disinfectors.

All hospitals were asked last year to review their services and bring the results together into regional plans for a modernised service. The new money has been released to support the implementation of these plans.

Announcing the moves, health minister John Denham said:

"We have no evidence of any patient being infected with variant CJD in hospital. But while we are still learning about the progress of variant CJD, we should take precautions to reduce the theoretical risk of transmission to patients. Scientists tell us that the most effective way to prevent the potential spread of this disease in hospitals is by cleaning and sterilisation to the highest standards."

Deputy Chief Medical Officer, Dr Pat Troop, added:

"We still do not know how many people might be incubating variant CJD. There is a theoretical risk that it could be passed on through surgical operations from those who have yet to show symptoms of the disease. The highest standards of decontamination are the cornerstone of our strategy to reduce the risks.

In a further step, the Department of Health has acted on expert advice from the Governments BSE expert advisory group the Spongiform Encephalopathy Advisory Committee (SEAC) and will be introducing single use instruments for tonsil surgery during 2001.

"We are following SEAC's advice in deciding to address tonsillectomy operations at this stage, because this is a specific procedure usually applied to children, and which involves a discrete set of instruments," Dr Troop explained. "This will allow us to learn valuable lessons should we decide ultimately to extend the use of single use instruments to other procedures."