Japan bans U.S. beef

[jayt90]

There is little information other than short radio reports, but apparently Japan is banning all U.S. beef based on a higher likelihood of BSE in a shipment from New York. Canada is not affected by the ban.

Does anyone have more information?

[Csaville]

Globe & Mail has a whole thing on it:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/sto.../International/

[Csaville]

So does CBC

http://www.cbc.ca/story/world/national/200...120-usbeef.html

[JohnL]

There is little information other than short radio reports, but apparently Japan is banning all U.S. beef based on a higher likelihood of BSE in a shipment from New York. Canada is not affected by the ban.

Does anyone have more information?

←

Boy is all this confusing!!!!

or what?

the fact remains that the number of cases of both infected animals and more importantly humans getting the disease from BSE is miniscule!

between this and bird flu....

by the way, I believe that more people get sick from eating unwashed vegetables that from either BSE or bird flu.

I wish someone would put all this into perspective--I am having trouble sleeping these days!!!!

Edited January 20, 2006 by JohnL (log)

[srhcb]

Boy is all this confusing!!!!

or what?

the fact remains that the number of cases of both infected animals and more importantly humans getting the disease from BSE is miniscule!

between this and bird flu....

by the way, I believe that more people get sick from eating unwashed vegetables that from either BSE or bird flu.

I wish someone would put all this into perspective--I am having trouble sleeping these days!!!!

←

I suspect this all has less to do with public health concerns than agribusiness'

concerns?

SB (sleeps like a baby)

[AccidentalHedonist]

the fact remains that the number of cases of both infected animals and more importantly humans getting the disease from BSE is miniscule!

The idea that the number of cases of cattle infected with BSE is miniscule is not correct. It may be, it may not be. The truth of the matter is that the USDA has no idea how many cows may or may not be infected with the disease.

The problem is twofold:

Firstly only four tenths of one percent of the entire US cattle population has been tested for BSE, hardly a well developed sample of the population.

Secondly, there's some question if the tests that have been performed have been done using the Western Blot test, the most effective test out of all in the industry.

As far as how prevelant BSE is in humans via food transmission is as yet, also undetermined, as symptoms may go unnoticed for years.

To say definitively that Mad Cow is no big deal is a dangerous bet to make. Mad Cow may be no big deal, but there are also indicators that prove that it may be a big deal. The real issue is that the USDA and the Cattle industry don't want to find out.

[Pan]

Globe & Mail has a whole thing on it:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/sto.../International/

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From that article:

[...]Mr. Nakagawa said recently that imported beef from the U.S. may have included material from cattle backbones. Including parts of the cow – such as spines, brains and bone marrow – thought to be at high risk of containing mad-cow disease would violate terms of an agreement that last month partially lifted a two-year-old ban on the beef.[...]

Some of you seem sure this isn't about protecting the health of the Japanese people. I'm not so sure. It sounds to me like the US beef industry was given a clear set of guidelines that required them to be careful, rather than slipshod, and someone in that industry failed the test. If so -- and I don't mean to lump all sectors of the US beef industry together -- you could see why that doesn't engender confidence in the safety of US beef on the part of another government.

[jayt90]

"There is little information other than short radio reports, but apparently Japan is banning all U.S. beef based on a higher likelihood of BSE in a shipment from New York. Canada is not affected by the ban.

Does anyone have more information?

←

Boy is all this confusing!!!!

or what?

the fact remains that the number of cases of both infected animals and more importantly humans getting the disease from BSE is miniscule!

between this and bird flu....

by the way, I believe that more people get sick from eating unwashed vegetables that from either BSE or bird flu. "

There is a vast difference between getting sick from unwashed vegs, and dying a slow, raging death from BSE, ten years later. But both diseases are preventable.

[srhcb]

There is a vast difference between getting sick from unwashed vegs, and dying a slow, raging death from BSE, ten years later.  But both diseases are preventable.

←

And one of them, for all intents and pujrposes, has been.

The most comprehensive, yet understandable explanation of the disease and the threats it poses was published inThe New Yorker several years ago.

I bought The Complete New Yorker on dvd, but have loaned it to my sister. As soon as I get it back that's the first thing I'm going to look up to re-read.

SB (advocating proper perspective)

[Patrick S]

Let me say first that I don't think you can fault Japan's decision. What happened was a violation of a trade agreement, and Japan has a right to respond as it sees fit.

the fact remains that the number of cases of both infected animals and more importantly humans getting the disease from BSE is miniscule!

The idea that the number of cases of cattle infected with BSE is miniscule is not correct. It may be, it may not be. The truth of the matter is that the USDA has no idea how many cows may or may not be infected with the disease.

←

I beg to differ. Thanks to the BSE Enhanced Surveillance Program, which is run by the USDA's Animal Health and Plant Inspection Service (APHIS), we actually have a very good idea of the prevalence of BSE in US cows, and can say without hesitation that it is miniscule. Based on hundreds of thousands of tests from the highest-risk cattle, t is currently thought that the prevalence of BSE in US cows is less than 1 per 15,000,000.

Unless you are working from some idiosyncratic definition of the term, the prevalence of BSE in US cows is unquestionably 'miniscule.'

Secondly, there's some question if the tests that have been performed have been done using the Western Blot test, the most effective test out of all in the industry.

←

The exceeding small number of samples that are inconclusive using the BSE quick screen are subjected to both western blot and IHC. There is little point to do the slower and much more expensive western blot on all samples, as opposed to the very few that are inconclusive from the rapid screen.

As far as how prevelant BSE is in humans via food transmission is as yet, also undetermined, as symptoms may go unnoticed for years.

←

The prevalence of BSE in humans is precisely zero. BSE is a cattle disease. Eating nervous tissue from cows infected with BSE can cause vCJD in humans, but not BSE. Of course it is correct that vCJD has a long latency period, but at this point we have no reason to believe that any cow with BSE ever entered the US food chain. That may have happened, but if it did, there is no reason to believe that it happened in large numbers. By contrast, according to the Wikipedia article on BSE, something like 400,000 BSE-infected cows are thought to have entered the food chain in the UK.

Mad Cow may be no big deal, but there are also indicators that prove that it may be a big deal.

←

Really? Which indicators are those? Please be specific. Even in the UK, which has lived through pretty much the worst case-scenario as far as BSE goes (hundreds of thousands of BSE-positive cows entering the food chain), it is estimated that the total death toll from vCJD will be about 200. That is horrible and tragic for those people that died, but in terms of public health, it is obviously an extremely infrequent cause of death.

The real issue is that the USDA and the Cattle industry don't want to find out.

←

Again, I beg to differ. USDA/APHIS' BSE Enhanced Surveillance Program is testing about 30,000 cattle every month for BSE. Since June 2004, 589,833 high-risk cows have been tested, with only one confirmed result, which again occurred in a cow born before the 1997 ban on BSE-spreading feed practices.

by the way, I believe that more people get sick from eating unwashed vegetables that from either BSE or bird flu.

Of course. The number of cases of sickness and death resulting pathogens on produce dwarfs that from vCJD. According to the Center for Science in the Public Interest, there were 554 outbreaks associated with produce from 1900 to 2003, sickening 28,315 people. Granted, the number of deaths is going to be far lower than the number of people sickened, but I think your point is valid: far more instances of sickness and death are associated with unwashed produce than with vCJD.

Edited January 23, 2006 by Patrick S (log)

[ghostrider]

Another case of Mad Cow reported in Canada today: Reuters article

[JohnL]

"There is little information other than short radio reports, but apparently Japan is banning all U.S. beef based on a higher likelihood of BSE in a shipment from New York. Canada is not affected by the ban.

Does anyone have more information?

←

Boy is all this confusing!!!!

or what?

the fact remains that the number of cases of both infected animals and more importantly humans getting the disease from BSE is miniscule!

between this and bird flu....

by the way, I believe that more people get sick from eating unwashed vegetables that from either BSE or bird flu. "

There is a vast difference between getting sick from unwashed vegs, and dying a slow, raging death from BSE, ten years later. But both diseases are preventable.

←

I think Patrick S handled this very well in his post.

I recommend that folks go to the CDC web site and look at the statistics and other facts about this issue.

My real problem is with the press who once again, are miserably failing to do their job well.

As with the "bird flu" epidemic, BSE is another "event" to sell papers and gain viewers etc.

What is needed is some perspective and context. Not more fear mongering.

[Pan]

I think bird flu is a much bigger deal. The people who have contracted it, albeit few for the time being, have died in high percentages:

http://yaleglobal.yale.edu/reports/avianflu.jsp

In May 2005, the World Health Organization (WHO) reported that 97 humans had contracted the avian flu since late 2003, and 53 of those infected died - a 53.7 percent fatality rate.

And as everyone knows, flu can spread easily. Furthermore, flu virus can mutate easily, and one of the worst epidemics in history was a flu epidemic that killed millions of people in 1918 and '19:

http://www.stanford.edu/group/virus/uda/

The influenza pandemic of 1918-1919 killed more people than the Great War, known today as World War I (WWI), at somewhere between 20 and 40 million people. It has been cited as the most devastating epidemic in recorded world history. More people died of influenza in a single year than in four-years of the Black Death Bubonic Plague from 1347 to 1351.

All that said, malaria and diseases related to water contamination (cholera, infant diarrhea, etc.) remain by far the worst health crises today, yet since they mostly remain localized in poor areas of the world, not that much is done about them.

[jayt90]

I think bird flu is a much bigger deal. The people who have contracted it, albeit few for the time being, have died in high percentages:

And as everyone knows, flu can spread easily. Furthermore, flu virus can mutate easily, and one of the worst epidemics in history was a flu epidemic that killed millions of people in 1918 and '19:

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What we are not told, by the press, on the avian flu issue, is that it has been around since the mid nineties and has not mutated. People who get the disease have handled chickens, or lived in the same area as the birds. In fact, some of the living conditions would be appalling to many Americans.

The big worry is that it could mutate to a form affecting humans, but it has not demonstrated this at all.

By the way, I lived through the Hong Kong Flu in 1968 and was flat on my back for 7 days. I have not had that kind of inflenza since.

[Pan]

What we are not told, by the press,  on the avian flu issue, is that it has been around since the mid nineties and has not mutated.

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That doesn't mean it couldn't mutate today. I don't think that all those health authorities are blowing smoke when they say this has the potential to become a disaster of epic proportions if it's not carefully watched.

People who get the disease have handled chickens, or lived in the same area as the birds. In fact, some of the living conditions would be appalling to many Americans.

←

Undoubtedly, but isn't it probably because of very expensive efforts to control the disease (such as by killing large numbers of chickens) and travel restrictions that it hasn't spread further in human populations?

The big worry is that it could mutate to a form affecting humans, but it has not demonstrated this at all.

←

Obviously, it has affected humans, just not by sickening them in large numbers.

By the way, I lived through the Hong Kong Flu in 1968 and was flat on my back for 7 days.  I have not had that kind of inflenza since.

←

In 2003, they guessed wrong about what strain of flu would infect the most people in North America, so despite getting the shot, I got sick -- so sick that there was one day when I would have been physically incable of opening my door and getting to the hospital, if I had had to (I managed to slowly walk outside and get a cab to the doctor's office and back the next day), and it took me at least a month to get well. "Ordinary" flu kills thousands of people a year, and I have no doubt that if I had been a fair bit weaker or had had an impaired immune system, that episode would have been fatal. And now, when you're talking about a strain that has killed over 50% of those infected, including young, previously healthy people, while there's clearly no reason for panic, I think it's pretty damned important for them to keep their eyes on it.

[Patrick S]

Its only a matter of time. There will be more influenza pandemics. I don't think most people realize that influenza (or flu-related complications, usually pneumonia) kills an average of 36,000 people in the US, per year, according to the CDC. Even in the best of years, it is a significant cause of death.

Compare that to a global vCJD death rate of something like 20-30 people/year. On a bad weekend during flu season, the number of Americans that will die of the flu is greater than number of people world-wide who are known to have ever died of vCJD (currently, something like 170 people).

Regarding the H5N1 flu strain, we can't say for sure what will happen. I basically agree with Pan. What you can say is that any virus with a ~50% mortality rate is worth keeping a very close eye on, particularly when it is thought that a relatively small number of mutations could make it more easily human-to-human communicable.

Interesting factoid: I don't know when the first case of human sickness from H5N1 occurred, but the first poultry outbreak from H5N1 was actually recorded in 1959, in Scotland, according to WHO. So the strain has actually been around for at least that long.

[JohnL]

Thanks Patrick--I really enjoy reading your posts!

As you point out--Bird flu has been around for 47 years.

It is worth noting that if in all this time the "predicted bird flu pandemic" has not occured--it is unlikely that it ever will.

That is not to say that sensible precautions and preventative should not be taken and that the situation does not require close monitoring.

Not long ago--we were "warned" that SARS was the next pandemic.

I would also note that there was a brief period when Ebola was hyped by the media and we were warned "it is only a matter of time..."

I also recal dire predictions in the early seventies of a "nuclear freeze."

Now it is global warming.

Pan is correct in pointing out that there are more urgent and more real problems with water born diseases. He is also correct in noting that because these problems are not close to home we (our media) do not focus on them in proportion to their seriousness.

What is needed is a press that challenges the information they and we get from all the vested interests and provides good reporting not scare tactics.

People need good facts and statistics--information that can help them make sound decisions.

[Pan]

[...]It is worth noting that if in all this time the "predicted bird flu pandemic" has not occured--it is unlikely that it ever will.[...]

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Keeping in mind that mere assertion does not constitute evidence, what scientific evidence can you bring to the table to support this claim?

Also, isn't it possible that SARS hasn't become a pandemic because of quarantines, travel restrictions, etc.?

[Patrick S]

As you point out--Bird flu has been around for 47 years.

It is worth noting that if in all this time the "predicted bird flu pandemic" has not occured--it is unlikely that it ever will.

←

The H5N1 flu virus has been around a while without causing a pandemic, true, but there are other things to consider. First, H5N1 is infecting a lot more birds now. This is significant because as more birds are infected, more copies of H5N1 exist in the world, and there are then more opportunities there are for the "right" mutations to occur, and the more opportunities there are for transmission from bird to human. And as the number of human infections increases, there are more opportunities for H5N1 to recombine with other viruses that infect humans, giving rise to a more virulent strain. There is no certainty at all that any of that will happen, and its impossible to really even say how probable it is. The point is just that as the virus increases in prevalence, the risks increase.

Coincidentally, the oldest known sample of HIV-positive blood also dates to 1959, taken from a Congolese man, IIRC. This is not to make an analogy between HIV and H5N1, but just to point out that a virus might be around for a while before some change, either in the virus itself or in some other factor, causes it to spread or become more pathogenic.

Another thing to consider is that not all H5N1s are identical. Like all RNA viruses, flu viruses have a high mutation rate. We are seeing new variants. The variant that is currently causing the epidemic in birds (or more precisely, an 'epizootic') and is also infecting some humans is not that same H5N1 that was found in 1959. According to the Wikipedia article on H5N1:

H5N1 is a type of avian influenza virus (bird flu virus) that has mutated[11] through antigenic drift into dozens of highly pathogenic varieties, but all currently belonging to genotype Z of avian influenza virus H5N1. Genotype Z emerged through reassortment in 2002 from earlier highly pathogenic genotypes of H5N1[12] that first appeared in China in 1996 in birds and in Hong Kong in 1997 in humans[13]. The "H5N1 viruses from human infections and the closely related avian viruses isolated in 2004 and 2005 belong to a single genotype, often referred to as genotype Z." [1]

Some of the mutations observed already are cause for concern. Just last week, for instance, H5N1 that caused an outbreak in Turkey was reported to have mutations that may make it more infectious to humans. As reported in the journal Nature, one of these mutations is an amino acid substitution on the H5N1 haemoagglutinin receptor protein that gives H5N1 a greater affinity for human haemoagglutinin receptors. There is also a glutamic acid>lycine substitution in the H5N1's polymerase protein. The article says:

The polymerase mutation is one of the ten genetic changes that gave rise to the 1918 pandemic flu virus. Like the 223-haemoagglutinin mutation, it signals adaptation to humans, says Alan Hay, director of a WHO influenza laboratory at the NIMR. "There is this glutamic acid–lysine flip," he explains. "Glutamic acid is associated with flu-virus replication in birds, and lycine is in primates."

The Turkey strains are the first in which the polymerase and receptor-binding mutations have been found together. They could make it easier for humans to catch the virus from poultry. But they might also favour human-to-human transmission. This is because the polymerase change helps the virus to survive in the cooler nasal regions of the respiratory tract, and the haemoagglutinin mutation encourages the virus to target receptors in the nose and throat, rather than lower down in the lungs. The virus is thought to be more likely to spread through droplets coughed from the nose and throat than from infections lower down.

H5N1 may well, in the end, be eradicated without causing many deaths. Or it may become pandemic, but in a form that has much lower mortality. Or it may become pandemic in a form that has high mortaity. The truth is that nobody knows for sure what will happen.

Edited January 26, 2006 by Patrick S (log)

[JohnL]

[...]It is worth noting that if in all this time the "predicted bird flu pandemic" has not occured--it is unlikely that it ever will.[...]

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Keeping in mind that mere assertion does not constitute evidence, what scientific evidence can you bring to the table to support this claim?

Also, isn't it possible that SARS hasn't become a pandemic because of quarantines, travel restrictions, etc.?

←

The scientific evidence--the odds, the numbers.

Yes, it is reasonable to assert that measures taken helped--even the WHO notes that SARs was held in check, in part, due to methods that are hundreds of years old. (at the source of the breakouts)--the fact is that doctors and hospitals did what they are supposed to do.

I also believe that it is reasonable to assert that much the reporting in the media on SAR's was not based upon facts and good evidence and perspective.

I also note that Patrick in his post sums things up nicely: "The truth is nobody knows for sure what will happen."

so

back to the Mad Cow issue.

It is good to err on the side of safety (few would argue this).

But are we really being served well by dire predictions with little or no perspective and context?

That is all I am noting.