3rd case of U.S. Mad Cow Disease

[Toliver]

On MSNBC:

"Alabama cow tests positive for mad cow disease"

The animal appears to have been at least 10 years old, Clifford said.

Analysts said the animal’s age will be a key factor in determining consumer and trader reaction.

If the cow was born after 1997, it would mean the animal became infected after a feed ban that was put in place to prevent the disease. If it was born before 1997, the cattle industry could argue the feed ban continues to work in preventing the disease.

...“If it was born after the feed ban in the United States it is a bigger problem, because it would be harder to say our system is working well,” Jim Robb, a Livestock Meat Information Center economist, said on Saturday after the preliminary results were announced.

If you live in the U.S., is beef still on your menu?

[JohnL]

On MSNBC:

"Alabama cow tests positive for mad cow disease"

The animal appears to have been at least 10 years old, Clifford said.

Analysts said the animal’s age will be a key factor in determining consumer and trader reaction.

If the cow was born after 1997, it would mean the animal became infected after a feed ban that was put in place to prevent the disease. If it was born before 1997, the cattle industry could argue the feed ban continues to work in preventing the disease.

...“If it was born after the feed ban in the United States it is a bigger problem, because it would be harder to say our system is working well,” Jim Robb, a Livestock Meat Information Center economist, said on Saturday after the preliminary results were announced.

If you live in the U.S., is beef still on your menu?

←

Just a question or two--

That would be three cows?

Out of how many?

and

How many people have gotten sick from these three cows?

also

How many people have come down with the Creutzfeldt- Jacob disease

from eating meat from cows (any cows).

While waiting for the answers --I am gonna have a big juicy rare

burger for lunch!

(with red onion)

[Darcie B]

Beef. It's What's For Dinner.

These cases have been so rare that to me it's not an immediate threat. I am much more likely to die as a result of a motorcycle accident than by eating contaminated beef.

A 10-year-old cow entering the food supply? That just doesn't seem right...I have never heard of a cow that old going in for processing. Yuck.

Anyway, I want to live, not just be alive. And part of living is eating well, including eating beef. It's going to take more than 3 cows in the U.S. testing positive for a disease whose transmission is still not fully understood for me to stop eating red meat. Pass the gravy.

[JohnL]

Beef. It's What's For Dinner.

These cases have been so rare that to me it's not an immediate threat. I am much more likely to die as a result of a motorcycle accident than by eating contaminated beef.

A 10-year-old cow entering the food supply? That just doesn't seem right...I have never heard of a cow that old going in for processing. Yuck.

Anyway, I want to live, not just be alive. And part of living is eating well, including eating beef. It's going to take more than 3 cows in the U.S. testing positive for a disease whose transmission is still not fully understood for me to stop eating red meat. Pass the gravy.

←

I also am more likely to die in a motorcycle accident

and I don't own a motor cycle!

[david coonce]

[enu?

←

[eje]

Just a question or two--

That would be three cows?

Out of how many?

←

There is an estimated 95 million head of cattle living in the US, and around 30 million slaughtered per year*. The FDA currently tests about 20,000** of those 30 million cows slaughtered.

I've seen estimates that the FDA has tested about 650,000 cows total.***

*In 2005, There were 32.4 million head of cattle slaughtered, down one per cent.

**Agencies Work to Corral Mad Cow Disease

***Possible U.S. Mad Cow Case Investigated

edit - grammar and sources

Edited March 14, 2006 by eje (log)

[Toliver]

Just a question or two--

That would be three cows?

Out of how many?

←

The pessimist in me says it's three cases that we know of...how many were not reported and quietly buried or ground into some homemade cattle feed?

There is an estimated 95 million head of cattle living in the US, and around 30 million slaughtered per year.  The FDA currently tests about 20,000 of those 30 million cows slaughtered.

I've seen estimates that the FDA has tested about 650,000 cows total.

edit - grammar.

←

If my math is correct, that works out to be about .07 percent being tested, which is frightening small. What's the statistical minimum of tested animals needed to make testing a valid representation of the whole? Somehow I think it would be a lot more than 20,000 cattle.

Any SSB's in the room?

[pam claughton]

Yes, seriously think about it, Beef is a huge industry in the US. If they increase testing, then they up the odds of finding more sick cows....which is not what they want. The less they test, the less we know....and the worse the problem could be.

I love beef, so I'm not ready to give it up just yet, but I am only buying organic beef and eating it less often.

Pam

[Rebecca263]

Hmm, I may need a new source for my "tartare". The question is, what?

[rockandroller]

Yes, seriously think about it, Beef is a huge industry in the US. If they increase testing, then they up the odds of finding more sick cows....which is not what they want. The less they test, the less we know....and the worse the problem could be.

I totally agree with your statement above. The testing is frighteningly poor and the USDA is completely corrupt so the tests are BS anyway (try reading Fast Food Nation, you'll learn a great deal).

I quit eating commercially processed ground beef several years ago, before FFN even came out, after a long preview article Morgan Spurlock had published that was sort of like a condensed, preview version of FFN. I love my beef and for awhile it was tough not to order hamburgers when out, but now I enjoy them only at home with beef from safe sources, and I still enjoy steak/non-ground cuts when out. Overall I would say it did cut my red meat consumption, which isn't a completely bad thing, health-wise, and the burgers I make at home are way better than what I got out anyway, the beef tastes so much better. I'm lucky to have a large market where local farmers raise and slaughter their own meats and they aren't processed at the slaughterhouses, where the speed and pressure on the workers to produce and quickly is what causes huge problems - why the spinal cord & other infected areas are allowed to be ground in in the first place - and it just feels safer, tastes better, and doesn't feel like a gamble.

I know "everything" will kill you nowadays but I don't get people not taking the simple step of ordering something else when out and demanding freshly ground beef (not freshly "reground," which is the case in 90% of groceries) from their butcher. Would you not look before crossing the street because you "assume" the odds are in your favor that no cars are coming or that those which are, will and can stop? Particularly children, whose immune systems aren't equipped for this kind of needless Russian Roulette. This isn't some pie-in-the-sky, made-up thing - in fact I recently learned that my boss' best friend lost a son to C-J disease some years ago, right here in the good old Midwest. It does happen.

[Patrick S]

Of all the foodbourne illnesses out there, "mad cow" worries me just about the least. This finding will have absolutely no impact on my own beef consumption.

Just a question or two--

That would be three cows?

Out of how many?

←

There is an estimated 95 million head of cattle living in the US, and around 30 million slaughtered per year*. The FDA currently tests about 20,000** of those 30 million cows slaughtered.

I've seen estimates that the FDA has tested about 650,000 cows total.***

←

Yes, but its the USDA, not the FDA. USDA/APHIS' BSE Enhanced Surveillance Program is testing about 30,000 cattle every month for BSE. Since June 2004, 652,697 cows have been tested.

But we need to keep in mind that the tests are not simply done randomly, they are focused on the cows that are considered most likely to test positive, so the incidence of 3/650,000 is certainly far higher than the incidence in the US herd at large. Based on hundreds of thousands of tests from the highest-risk cattle, it is currently thought that the prevalence of BSE in US cows is less than 1 per several million cattle. By contrast, in the UK, at the height of the BSE epidemic, something like 1/3 high-risk cattle were BSE-positive (compared to something like 3/600,000 in the US so far tested).

And I think everyone should keep a few very important facts in mind:

1. This cow was at least 10 years old, and therefore was born before the ruminant feed ban (which was enacted in 96 or 97, IIRC). Of the two US-born cows that have tested BSE-positive, BOTH were born before the ruminant feed ban (the third "US cow" came from Canada). There is no evidence that any new infections have even occurred in the past decade, or that the ruminant feed ban has been anything less than 100% effective in preventing new cattle infections.

2. There is, at this point, no evidence that even a single BSE-positive cow has entered the US food chain. In the UK, they have lived through what it basically the worst-case scenario: It is estimated that something like 500,000 BSE cows entered the food chain there, and despite that, there have only been 150-ish cases of vCJD, and it has been estimated that the total number of cases will end up being around 200.

3. So far, there is no evidence that even a single person has developed vCJD as a result of eating US beef. Even allowing for a 10-year latency, the cases should be appearing. The only case I could find information about was a 22 year old Florida woman who was born and grew up in the UK. Maybe I'm missing something though -- can anyone point me to a single uncontroversially-diagnosed case of vCJD in a US person who did not live in the UK?

4. By any realistic estimation, the absolute risk of death from just about any conventional pathogen dwarfs that from vCJD. You are far, far more likely to die from eating raw vegetables than you are from vCJD. According to the Center for Science in the Public Interest, there were 554 outbreaks associated with produce from 1990 to 2003, sickening 28,315 people. The number of sickness and deaths from vCJD aquired from US beef is currently, 0 and 0, respectively. While those numbers may rise the future, there is no reason to believe that the numbers will ever even approach those in the UK. Given these differences in absoute risk, it seems odd to me that no one appears to be clamoring for enhanced inspection and testing of fruits and vegetables, or for mandatory food irradiation which would essentially eliminate this problem.

Edited March 14, 2006 by Patrick S (log)

[Patrick S]

I love beef, so I'm not ready to give it up just yet, but I am only buying organic beef

←

I'm curious, Pam. What makes you believe that the risk of vCJD is lower from organic beef as opposed to conventional beef?

[rockandroller]

Interesting, Patrick, hope you don't mind a little discussion/debate. First off, there are actually lots of people clamoring for cleaner fruits & veggies, and while I'm not as good with statistics as you are, I think most if not all of the illnesses you can get from veggies are not fatal, brain-wasting diseases for which there is no cure.

There are a million and one other ways one could die, not just from eating but from everything that happens on a given day, than getting CJD or vCJD, I'm just saying why would you take the chance. I can *wash* my veggies, which gets rid of most if not all pathogens, esp if I buy organic. You can't wash away BSE from spinal cord in your hamburger, is all I'm saying.

[Patrick S]

I think most if not all of the illnesses you can get from veggies are not fatal, brain-wasting diseases for which there is no cure. 

←

That is certainly true, but completely beside the point. For the thousands of people who do die or who suffer serious and lasting adverse effects, it really doesn't matter that most people recover from food poisoning.

esp if I buy organic.

←

I don't want to be a pain in the ass about this, but if you're going to make a claim about the superior safety of organic food, in this case a lower risk of exposure to pathogens, I'd really appreciate it if you at least attempt to provide some evidence for that.

[rockandroller]

You're not a pain, I don't mind a little discussion and disagreement. I don't have all the statistics to back everything up as I read and absorb from a variety of sources. I'm also not saying organic ground beef is safer than non-organic, which I think another poster mentioned, as I believe it's still processed in the slaughterhouses with the other beef, which is where I think the problem lies.

From what I've read, my personal choice is simply that I'm not comfortable eating commercially processed ground beef, and I believe organic produce to be safer than non-organic as it relates to toxins, pesticides and other things that can make one sick. It's just my opinion

[Patrick S]

I'm also not saying organic ground beef is safer than non-organic, which I think another poster mentioned, as I believe it's still processed in the slaughterhouses with the other beef, which is where I think the problem lies.

←

Fair enough. But even though you're not making that claim, let me go ahead and explain why it appears to be wrong, at least with respect to BSE/vCJD: the only known way for BSE to be transmitted from cow to cow is through food, and it is thought that the BSE epidemic in he UK was spread through meat and bone meal, where bits of infected cow were processed and fed to other cows, ad infinitum. As he MSNBC article in the OP points out: "Eating contaminated feed is the only way cattle are known to contract the disease." So here's the thing, this practice was banned in 1997, and its illegal for both organic and conventional farms. So therefore I don't think that either mode of production should produce a higher or lower incidence of BSE. Before 1997, it may have been a different story.

[JohnL]

I love beef, so I'm not ready to give it up just yet, but I am only buying organic beef

←

I'm curious, Pam. What makes you believe that the risk of vCJD is lower from organic beef as opposed to conventional beef?

←

I am also curious about what makes you believe the beef industry would want a situation where this disease was rampant and thriving?

with people who consume their products getting sick and dying from a horrible disease?

[rockandroller]

That's all well and good but I have read more than one article about farmers *continuing the practice* (of feeding the cows feed that included the ground up cow/animal parts in it) well after it was outlawed as illegal. There is very little enforcement or checking up on what the farmers are actually doing, and while the slaughterhouses are few, the farms and farmers are still many, many, many and I think it's like mushroom hunting - if a few were found breaking the law after it was enacted, there are others we don't know about.

It's not like they told everyone it was illegal and to stop it and they automatically did. It's illegal to cheat on your taxes, steal, and speed but people still do it.

[rockandroller]

It's less about them "wanting" a disease rampant and thriving to them not being willing to take extra costs and protective measures if it costs them money and time. Have you read Fast Food Nation?

[Patrick S]

That's all well and good but I have read more than one article about farmers *continuing the practice* (of feeding the cows feed that included the ground up cow/animal parts in it) well after it was outlawed as illegal.

←

May you're right, but "Some dude told me one that there was this one farm somewhere were they still fed cows to cows" is not verifiable or compelling. I know that FDA does run a feed testing program designed to test compliance of the ruminant feed ban, where they go and sample cow feed from farms and test it for ruminant material. Maybe you could provide some information on the number of violations this program has discovered?

[rockandroller]

I didn't quite say "some dude" told me and it's clear that you and I simply disagree on this issue. There is verifiable and compelling researched evidence in Fast Food Nation, which you didn't answer as to whether or not you've read it, so I gather you haven't. I don't consider someone who spent several years researching this issue and then writing a comprehensive report on what he's found to necessarily be "some dude," and he's not the only source I've read on the subject either.

Let's just agree to disagree, though I do hope you'll read the book. Obviously I don't hope I'm right about this issue, I'm just saying I'd rather be safe than sorry.

[Patrick S]

It's less about them "wanting" a disease rampant and thriving to them not being willing to take extra costs and protective measures if it costs them money and time.

←

That's true, but then nothing will cost your farm more time and money than being found to be not in compliance with laws relating to BSE countermeasures. And I also think most cattle farmers understand that BSE is an enormous risk to their whole industry, and therefore to them personally, and that it is very much in their interest to take it seriously.

[Patrick S]

I didn't quite say "some dude" told me and it's clear that you and I simply disagree on this issue.  There is verifiable and compelling researched evidence in Fast Food Nation, which you didn't answer as to whether or not you've read it, so I gather you haven't.

←

No, I haven't read it. Since you have, could you summarize the verifiable evidence in the book relating to violations of the ruminant feed ban?

[JohnL]

It's less about them "wanting" a disease rampant and thriving to them not being willing to take extra costs and protective measures if it costs them money and time.  Have you read Fast Food Nation?

←

The key is "extra costs and protective measures."

There is a trade off here as to how far we want to go.

Do we want a higher degree of confidence? and how much are we--consumers willing to pay for it. and will we ever reach a level of total confidence?

Are you ok with fifty dollars a pound? sixty?

fast Food Nation is fine--the author is making a case--he is not an "unbiased" reporter.

I am as skeptical of books like this as I am of any large industry.--we all should be.

In the end we have a pretty good system of checks and balances--industry--government--politicians--courts--consumer groups--scientists etc etc etc.

I believe that as chaotic as things can be--we end up in good shape!

[rockandroller]

I don't have the book with me nor the time to summarize it for you, but I did find some things online for your perusal:

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/155217_cowfeed03.html

http://tinyurl.com/nwezy

http://tinyurl.com/5owg9

http://tinyurl.com/mn2pg