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From: TSS ()
WASHINGTON - An Alabama cow has tested positive for mad cow disease, the third case of the brain-wasting disorder discovered on the nation's cattle farms in the last 2 1/2 years, the Agriculture Department said Monday. In what could be yet another blow to beef exporters' efforts to pry open foreign markets closed to their products, USDA officials announced that a follow-up test conducted on tissue taken from an older downer cow had confirmed the presence of bovine spongiform encephalopathy, better known as mad cow disease. Further test results could come later this week. Regulators said beef from the animal had not entered the food supply. "This animal did not enter the human food or animal feed chains," USDA Chief Veterinarian John Clifford said. The diseased animal had lived on the unidentified Alabama farm for less than a year, regulators said. USDA officials could not immediately say exactly how old the cow was or where it was born. Regulators are keen to know the animal's age because the U.S. Food and Drug Administration implemented new feed rules in 1997 that were designed to better avoid the spread of the disease through contaminated food. A veterinarian who examined the cow's teeth estimated the cow's age at "upwards of 10 years," Clifford said. The cow was buried on the farm. Regulators are looking for offspring as well as the cow's original herd-mates. The farm, where about 40 head of cattle had been kept, has not been formally quarantined, although Alabama Agriculture Commissioner Ron Sparks noted: "No animals are leaving this farm until we've finished our investigation." USDA officials reported the nation's first case of mad cow disease in December 2003, when a cow imported from Canada was found to have had the ailment. Then last June, regulators learned a Texas cow months earlier had been infected with the disease. After the first case of mad cow was discovered, Japan and other major export markets quickly slammed the door on U.S. beef products. Regulators responded to the crisis by launching a massive program to better screen for the disease, and more than 650,000 cattle have been tested since June 2004. Late last year, Japan reopened its market, only to seal its borders once again when a New York processing plant shipped banned animal parts to that country. Clifford said USDA officials "would not anticipate that this would impact our ongoing negotiations. Edna cattleman Shane Sklar acknowledged that "it's always scary when these things happen," but said he does not expect any "knee-jerk" reactions from U.S. trading partners. USDA officials first revealed over the weekend they had discovered a possible case of mad cow. That allowed traders to digest the news before trading resumed on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange on Monday. June live cattle futures rose 0.025 cent to close at 79.125 cents a pound Monday, while May feeder cattle futures were up 0.475 cent to $1.04575 a pound. "Based on what we saw today on the futures market, I don't think we're anticipating much of a reaction," said Burt Rutherford, a spokesman for the Amarillo-based Texas Cattle Feeders Association. But before they can become too sanguine, cattle raisers want to know exactly where this cow came from. "Everybody in the industry is going to be pretty anxious to know that," Rutherford said. In Texas, the cattle business is a $5.6 billion industry. The diseased animal was a Santa Gertrudis cow, USDA officials said. The discovery of this latest case comes as regulators were preparing to ratchet back the heightened screening program. Whether the Alabama cow will force them to reconsider those plans is unclear. Tony Corbo, legislative representative for the Washington-based consumers group Food and Water Watch, argued that the industry would more quickly build confidence abroad if the surveillance program remains in place. "The trading partners may insist on it," he said. Food safety groups also questioned regulators' suggestions that the animal would have contracted the disease by eating contaminated food sometime before the feed regulations were imposed in 1997. "It's the ultimate 'don't look, don't find' policy. And the people who pay the price are consumers," Mendelson said. Still, cattle industry officials hope diners will continue to order hamburger and steaks, just as they did after the last two mad cow cases were detected. "I had a hamburger for lunch," said Richard Wortham, executive vice president of the Texas Beef Council. And he said he planned to eat beef again for dinner last night. david.ivanovich@chron.com jenalia.moreno@chron.com Jenalia Moreno reported from Houston. http://chron.com/disp/story.mpl/business/3721562.html ================================== The diseased animal was a Santa Gertrudis cow, USDA officials said. =================================== i figured that damn cow might have a Texas connection. no place like home, home of the purina feed mill, where fda states its ok to feed cattle 5.5 grams of potentially tainted feed and that's safe, when we know now and knew back then that 5.5 grams is enough to kill 100+ cows. ... FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Note: On Dec. 23, 2003, the U.S. Department of Agriculture reported that a cow in Washington state had tested positive for bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE, or mad cow disease). As a result, information on this Web page stating that no BSE cases had been found in the United States is now incorrect. However, because other information on this page continues to have value, the page will remain available for viewing. FDA ANNOUNCES TEST RESULTS FROM TEXAS FEED LOT FDA has determined that each animal could have consumed, at most and in total, five-and-one-half grams - approximately a quarter ounce -- of prohibited material. These animals weigh approximately 600 pounds. It is important to note that the prohibited material was domestic in origin (therefore not likely to contain infected material because there is no evidence of BSE in U.S. cattle), fed at a very low level, and fed only once. The potential risk of BSE to such cattle is therefore exceedingly low, even if the feed were contaminated. According to Dr. Bernard Schwetz, FDA's Acting Principal Deputy Commissioner, "The challenge to regulators and industry is to keep this disease out of the United States. One important defense is to prohibit the use of any ruminant animal materials in feed for other ruminant animals. Combined with other steps, like U.S. Department of Agriculture's (USDA) ban on the importation of live ruminant animals from affected countries, these steps represent a series of protections, to keep American cattle free of BSE." Despite this negligible risk, Purina Mills, Inc., is nonetheless announcing that it is voluntarily purchasing all 1,222 of the animals held in Texas and mistakenly fed the animal feed containing the prohibited material. Therefore, meat from those animals will not enter the human food supply. FDA believes any cattle that did not consume feed containing the prohibited material are unaffected by this incident, and should be handled in the beef supply clearance process as usual. FDA believes that Purina Mills has behaved responsibly by first reporting the human error that resulted in the misformulation of the animal feed supplement and then by working closely with State and Federal authorities. This episode indicates that the multi-layered safeguard system put into place is essential for protecting the food supply and that continued vigilance needs to be taken, by all concerned, to ensure these rules are followed routinely. FDA will continue working with USDA as well as State and local officials to ensure that companies and individuals comply with all laws and regulations designed to protect the U.S. food supply. http://www.fda.gov/bbs/topics/NEWS/2001/NEW00752.html look at the table and you'll see that as little as 1 mg (or 0.001 gm) caused 7% (1 of 14) of the cows to come down with BSE; Corinne Ida Lasmézas, Emmanuel Comoy, Stephen Hawkins, Christian Herzog, Franck Mouthon, Timm Konold, Frédéric Auvré, Evelyne Correia, Nathalie Lescoutra-Etchegaray, Nicole Salès, Gerald Wells, Paul Brown, Jean-Philippe Deslys 100 g 10 g 5 g 1 g 100 mg 10 mg 1 mg 0·1 mg 0·01 mg Primate (oral route)* 1/2 (50%) Cattle (oral route)* 10/10 (100%) 7/9 (78%) 7/10 (70%) 3/15 (20%) 1/15 (7%) 1/15 (7%) RIII mice (icip route)* 17/18 (94%) 15/17 (88%) 1/14 (7%) PrPres biochemical detection The comparison is made on the basis of calibration of the bovine inoculum used in our study with primates against a bovine brain inoculum with a similar PrPres concentration that was inoculated into mice and cattle.8 *Data are number of animals positive/number of animals surviving at the time of clinical onset of disease in the first positive animal (%). The accuracy of bioassays is generally judged to be about plus or minus 1 log. icip=intracerebral and intraperitoneal. Table 1: Comparison of transmission rates in primates and cattle infected orally with similar BSE brain inocula http://www.thelancet.com/journal/journal.isa It is clear that the designing scientists must also have shared Mr Bradley’s surprise at the results because all the dose levels right down to 1 gram triggered infection. 6. It also appears to me that Mr Bradley’s answer (that it would take less than say 100 grams) was probably given with the benefit of hindsight; particularly if one considers that later in the same answer Mr Bradley expresses his surprise that it could take as little of 1 gram of brain to cause BSE by the oral route within the same species. This information did not become available until the "attack rate" experiment had been completed in 1995/96. This was a titration experiment designed to ascertain the infective dose. A range of dosages was used to ensure that the actual result was within both a lower and an upper limit within the study and the designing scientists would not have expected all the dose levels to trigger infection. The dose ranges chosen by the most informed scientists at that time ranged from 1 gram to three times one hundred grams. It is clear that the designing scientists must have also shared Mr Bradley’s surprise at the results because all the dose levels right down to 1 gram triggered infection. [BBC radio 4 FARM news] http://www.maddeer.org/audio/BBC4farmingtoday2_1_03.ram http://www.fda.gov/ohrms/dockets/ac/03/slides/3923s1_OPH.htm To cattle: 1 gram of infected brain material (by oral ingestion) http://www.inspection.gc.ca/english/sci/bio/bseesbe.shtml October 11, 2005 http://www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-06-157R 03-025IFA From: Terry S. Singeltary Sr. [flounder9@verizon.net] Sent: Thursday, September 08, 2005 6:17 PM To: fsis.regulationscomments@fsis.usda.gov Subject: [Docket No. 03-025IFA] FSIS Prohibition of the Use of Specified Risk Materials for Human Food and Requirements for the Disposition of Non-Ambulatory Disabled Cattle Greetings FSIS, I would kindly like to submit the following to [Docket No. 03-025IFA] FSIS Prohibition of the Use of Specified Risk Materials for Human Food and Requirements for the Disposition of Non-Ambulatory Disabled Cattle THE BSE/TSE SUB CLINICAL Non-Ambulatory Disabled Cattle Broken bones and such may be the first signs of a sub clinical BSE/TSE Non-Ambulatory Disabled Cattle ; snip...FULL TEXT ; STRICTLY PRIVATE AND CONFIDENTIAL 25, AUGUST 1995 snip... To minimise the risk of farmers' claims for compensation from feed To minimise the potential damage to compound feed markets through adverse publicity. To maximise freedom of action for feed compounders, notably by snip... THE FUTURE 4.......... MAFF remains under pressure in Brussels and is not skilled at 5. Tests _may_ show that ruminant feeds have been sold which 6. The threat remains real and it will be some years before feed SEE full text ; http://www.bseinquiry.gov.uk/files/yb/1995/08/24002001.pdf
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