mrj said:
What is the basis for claims that the USA does NOT have the safest food in the world?
What is the incidence of foodborne illnesses caused by contamination AFTER the food has left the processor as compared with that due to food contaminated at a processing facility before the consumer gets the food?
mrj
mrj,
you should take your own advice :wink:
> Be careful what you ask for!
ill try and keep this short :shock:
mrj, you must have ADD, cause you surely do not pay attention. you must be be one of those folks that believe that the ''24 hour bug, and or 24 hour stomach virus' after eating out, is just that. NOT!
mrj ask ;
> What is the basis for claims that the USA does NOT have the safest food in the world?
> What is the incidence of foodborne illnesses caused by contamination AFTER the food has left the processor
> as compared with that due to food contaminated at a processing facility before the consumer gets the food?
although i could not find any direct report or study defining incidence of foodborne illnesses caused by contamination AFTER the food has left the processor as compared with that due to food contaminated at a processing facility before the consumer gets the food, the fda itself said ;
FDA IN CRISIS MODE, AMERICAN LIVES AT RISK
http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/cidrap/content/fs/food-disease/news/dec0407fda.html
FDA SCIENCE AND MISSION AT RISK
http://www.fda.gov/ohrms/dockets/ac/07/briefing/2007-4329b_02_01_FDA%20Report%20on%20Science%20and%20Technology.pdf
HOWEVER, this study itself says that the USA is only AVERAGE compared to the SUPERIOR Countires ;
Release Date: May 21, 2008 Media Contact: Erin Brown, External Relations E-mail:
[email protected]. Phone: 306-585-5632 Mobile: 306-536-4312 Fax: 306-585-4997
U of R professors rank Canada fifth out of 17 industrialized countries in international food safety study
Late last year, two University of Regina professors posed the question - how safe is Canada's food supply compared to other countries? After months of research and comparative work, they have released a new study today which indicates that Canada's food safety systems are among the most thorough and effective in the world.
The Food Safety Performance World Ranking 2008, which is the first study of its kind in the world, has been produced by Sylvain Charlebois, a marketing professor in the U of R's Paul J. Hill School of Business, and Chris Yost, a biology professor who is also the Canada Research Chair in Microbes, the Environment and Food Safety. The study benchmarks Canada's food safety performance relative to that of other Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries in four major areas: consumer affairs; biosecurity and trades; governance and recalls; and traceability and management.
In the study, Canada ranks fifth out of 17 industrialized countries in terms of its practices in dealing with the risks related to safety within food systems - a strong showing, according to Charlebois.
"Canada's performance was unexpected," says Charlebois. "Canada's capacity to connect with its consumers compared to other industrialized nations is impressive. The report is evidence that Canada should be considered one of the world's leading countries in relation to food safety."
With an overall ranking of "superior," Canada finished in the same tier as the United Kingdom, which had the highest ranking of the 17 countries studied. The ranking of all OECD countries is as follows:
1. United Kingdom - Superior 2. Japan - Superior 3. Denmark - Superior 4. Australia - Superior 5. Canada - Superior
6. Finland - Average 7. United States - Average 8. Switzerland - Average 9. Norway - Average 10. Germany Average 11. Italy - Average 12. Netherlands - Average 13. Sweden - Average 14. Austria - Average
15. France - Poor 16. Belgium - Poor 17. Ireland - Poor
Charlebois and Yost hope the Food Safety Performance World Ranking 2008 will help academics, practitioners and policymakers to evaluate and strengths and weaknesses of food safety systems and processes both in Canada and beyond. The study is the first project by the Research Network in Food Systems, a not-for-profit research group based out of the U of R. The Research Network in Food Systems will produce a follow-up study in the next couple of years.
A 26-page abstract of the study can be found here.
For further information, or to receive a copy of the complete study, please contact Sylvain Charlebois by telephone at (306) 337-2695, by cell at (306) 596-8637, or by email at
[email protected].. - 30 -
http://www.uregina.ca/news/newsreleases.php?release=472
ALSO, these figures by the cdc might alarm _some_ folks here, i don't think mrj is capable of understanding the scope of just how bad and or vunerable our food supply in the USA really is $
What foods are most associated with foodborne illness?
Raw foods of animal origin are the most likely to be contaminated; that is, raw meat and poultry, raw eggs, unpasteurized milk, and raw shellfish. Because filter-feeding shellfish strain microbes from the sea over many months, they are particularly likely to be contaminated if there are any pathogens in the seawater. Foods that mingle the products of many individual animals, such as bulk raw milk, pooled raw eggs, or ground beef, are particularly hazardous because a pathogen present in any one of the animals may contaminate the whole batch.
A single hamburger may contain meat from hundreds of animals.
A single restaurant omelet may contain eggs from hundreds of chickens.
A glass of raw milk may contain milk from hundreds of cows.
A broiler chicken carcass can be exposed to the drippings and juices of many thousands of other birds that went through the same cold water tank after slaughter.
Fruits and vegetables consumed raw are a particular concern. Washing can decrease but not eliminate contamination, so the consumers can do little to protect themselves. Recently, a number of outbreak have been traced to fresh fruits and vegetables that were processed under less than sanitary conditions. These outbreaks show that the quality of the water used for washing and chilling the produce after it is harvested is critical. Using water that is not clean can contaminate many boxes of produce. Fresh manure used to fertilize vegetables can also contaminate them. Alfalfa sprouts and other raw sprouts pose a particular challenge, as the conditions under which they are sprouted are ideal for growing microbes as well as sprouts, and because they are eaten without further cooking. That means that a few bacteria present on the seeds can grow to high numbers of pathogens on the sprouts. Unpasteurized fruit juice can also be contaminated if there are pathogens in or on the fruit that is used to make it.
snip...
http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/dbmd/diseaseinfo/foodborneinfections_g.htm#riskiestfoods
Enteric infections enter the body through the mouth and intestinal tract and are usually spread through contaminated food and water or by contact with vomit or feces.
Every year an estimated 76 million cases of foodborne illness and 5,000 associated deaths occur in the United States.
Much of this burden could be prevented with better science and prevention tools. Each year in the developing world, diarrheal illness from contaminated food and water causes 2 million deaths in young children. We are working to decrease the burden of bacterial foodborne and diarrheal illness by 50% by the year 2010. The Enteric Diseases Epidemiology and Laboratory Branches are innovative public health investigative and consultative groups that identifiy causes, sources and solutions for bacterial foodborne and diarrheal infections to prevent the disability and death those diseases cause. Our central values are scientific integrity, rapid response to emergencies, service to states and nations, innovation through informed expertise, and close collaboration between disciplines of epidemiology and microbiology. We are 50 persons organized in teams: outbreak surveillance and response, national surveillance, FoodNet and diarrheal diseases.
http://www.cdc.gov/enterics/
How many cases of foodborne disease are there in the United States?
An estimated 76 million cases of foodborne disease occur each year in the United States. The great majority of these cases are mild and cause symptoms for only a day or two. Some cases are more serious, and CDC estimates that there are 325,000 hospitalizations and 5,000 deaths related to foodborne diseases each year. The most severe cases tend to occur in the very old, the very young, those who have an illness already that reduces their immune system function, and in healthy people exposed to a very high dose of an organism.
http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/dbmd/diseaseinfo/foodborneinfections_g.htm#howmanycases
The Study Food-Related Illness and Death from Known Pathogens Total Cases To estimate the total number of foodborne illnesses caused by known pathogens, we determined the number of reported cases for each pathogen, adjusted the figures to account for underreporting, and estimated the proportion of illnesses specifically attributable to foodborne transmission. Although data from various periods were used, adjustments for changes in population size had minimal effect on the final estimates and were therefore omitted.
Cases may be reported in association with documented foodborne outbreaks, through passive surveillance systems (e.g., the National Notifiable Disease Surveillance System, the Public Health Laboratory Information System), or through active surveillance systems (e.g., FoodNet). Sporadic illness caused by some pathogens (e.g., Bacillus cereus, Clostridium perfringens, Staphylococcus aureus) is not reportable through passive or active systems; hence, the only cases reported are those related to outbreaks. For these pathogens, we have assumed that if diagnosed sporadic cases were reported, the total number would be 10 times the number of outbreak-related cases. This multiplier is based on experience with pathogens for which data are available on both sporadic and outbreak-associated cases (e.g., reported cases of Salmonella or Shigella, Table 2). For all pathogens, the number of outbreak-related cases was calculated as the average annual number of such cases reported to CDC from 1983 to 1992, the most recent years for which published outbreak data are available. For pathogens also under passive surveillance, we used the average number of cases reported to CDC from 1992 through 1997, and for pathogens under active surveillance through FoodNet, we used the average rate observed for the surveillance population from 1996 to 1997 and applied this to the total 1997 U.S. population (with some modification for E. coli O157:H7; Appendix).
see full text ;
http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/eid/vol5no5/mead.htm
Until the Jack in the Box outbreak, many consumers believed that people got sick from food they didn't cook right. "Now," Griffin says, "we are more aware that the responsibility does not rest solely with the cook. We know that contamination often occurs early in the production process—at steps on the way from farm or field or fishing ground to market."
http://science.nationalgeographic.com/science/health-and-human-body/human-body/food-safety.html
also, the FDAs past history and ethics has been in question for some time ;
Date: October 18, 2006 at 7:44 am PST
Former FDA Commissioner Pleads Guilty to Conflict of Interest and Making False Financial Disclosures
WASHINGTON, Oct. 17, 2006 - Lester M. Crawford, a former Commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), has pled guilty to a Conflict of Interest charge and Making False Financial Disclosures to the U.S. Senate and the Executive Branch, announced U.S. Attorney Jeffrey A. Taylor and Inspector General Daniel Levinson, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
http://www.pharmalive.com/News/index.cfm?articleid=382127&categoryid=30
Farmers have in the past 50 years shifted the diets of beef cattle from hay to grain in order to boost growth rates and reduce costs. "When ruminants are fed fiber-deficient rations," write USDA's James B. Russell and Jennifer Rychlik of Cornell University, "microbial ecology is altered, and the animal becomes more susceptible to metabolic disorders and, in some cases, infectious diseases."
In addition, new technologies have encouraged the feeding of a wider range of materials to cattle, including wastes. "Chickens in the U.S. eat a variety of feed, including fish meal from Asia," explains Frederick Angulo of the CDC. "Cattle eat such agricultural by-products as peanut hulls, almond shells, waste from bakeries, and poultry manure. These commodities are shipped all over the world.'
By recirculating animal by-products and waste, we may be creating new niches and opportunities for foodborne pathogens to enter the food supply and spread. In Great Britain evidence of the dangers of using animal by-products in livestock feed surfaced in the outbreak of mad cow disease, or bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE). The rapid spread of the illness, which likely resulted from feeding cattle meat and bonemeal from animals that already had the disease, was linked with more than a hundred cases of deadly Creutzfeldt-Jakob brain disease in humans who had consumed the infected meat. Since the outbreak among cattle in Great Britain in 1986, BSE has been found in animals in several European countries and Japan.
In 1997 the FDA banned the use of rendered remains of dead cattle and sheep in feed for U.S. ruminants, and there is no sign of BSE yet in the U.S. But many consumer groups are concerned that the government rules for animal feed include too many loopholes. Regulations still allow the use of animal blood and blood products as well as pig and horse protein. They also allow poultry to be used in cattle feed and cattle to be used in poultry feed. Is this an effective recycling of animal protein or a breach in a basic ecologic relationship—with serious consequences for our food supply?
Also present in the troughs of our food animals may be an even greater health hazard than pathogens themselves: antibiotics.
see Food: How Safe?
Republished from the pages of National Geographic magazine Written by Jennifer Ackerman May 2002
http://science.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/food-how-safe.html
ONE HUNDRED EIGHTH CONGRESS COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM
TOM LANTOS. CALIFORNIA MAJOR R OWENS. NEW YORK EDOLPHUS TOWNS, NEW YORK PAUL E KANJORSKI PENNSYLVANIA CAROLYN B MALONEY, NEW YORK ELIJAH E CUMMINGS MARYLAND DENNIS J KUCINICH OHIO DANNY K DAVIS ILLINOIS JOHN F TIERNEY MASSACHUSETTS WM LACY CLAY MISSOURI DIANE E WATSON CALIFORNIA STEPHEN F LYNCH MASSACNUSETS CHRIS VAN HOLLEN MARYLAND LINDAT SANCHEZ CALIFORNIA CA DUTCHRUPPERSBERGER MARYLAND ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA JIM COOPER TENNESSEE
BERNARD SANDERS VERMONT INDEPENDENT
May 13,2004
The Honorable Ann M. Veneman Secretary of Agriculture Department of Agriculture 1400 Independence Avenue, SW Washington, DC 202.50
Dear Madam Secretary:
I am writing to express concern that the recent failure of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to test a Texas cow with neurological syrnptoms for bovine spongifonn encephalopathy (BSE) may reflect wider problems in the surveillance program. USDA apparently does not keep track of how many cows condemned for central nervous system symptoms are tested for BSE nor does it require that suspect carcasses be held pending testing. Effective surveillance and control of BSE in the United States require a reliable system for ensuring that potentially infected cows are tested and that no infected materials enter the animal or human food supply.
Under USDA regulations, any cow that exhibits signs of central nervous system (CNS) problems must be condemned by Food Safety Inspection Service (FSIS) personnel at the plant.1 According to a 1997 Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (NHIS) Memorandum, brain samples all of such animals should be sent for BSE testing.2 The memorandum notes that "
t is essential that brain specimens be collected from adult cattle condemned for CNS signs as part of our national surveillance of BSE."
The cow slaughtered at the Lone Star Beef slaughterhouse last week staggered and fell, and was condemned ante mortem by FSIS personnel.4 Despite a request from APHIS personnel at the plant to conduct BSE testing, however, an APHIS supervisor in Austin reportedly refused the test and instructed the plant to send the carcass for rendering.5
This sequence of events is troubling, and it raises the question of whether this is an isolated incident. In 1997, USDA noted a major gap between the number of cattle condemned for CNS symptoms and the number of these cows actually tested for mad cow disease. The Department found:
Based on information provided by the Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS), the number of adult cattle (2 years of age or greater) condemned at slaughter due to CNS signs is much greater than the number whose brains have been collected for testing.6
Despite recognizing the problem more than six years ago, however, USDA apparently did not adopt procedures to ensure that these samples would be collected. In March 2004, the Government Reform Committee asked USDA to provide, for each of the last five years, the number of BSE tests performed on cattle condemned by FSIS inspectors on the basis of CNS symptoms.7 In response, USDA provided information on the numbers of cattle condemned for CNS symptoms by FSIS, but replied that "[ilt is not possible to determine, from the data we currently collect, how many of these cattle were tested by APHIS for BSE."' It thus appears that not only does USDA not routinely track the gap between the number of condemned and tested cattle, but that USDA could not even calculate this gap when requested to do so by Congress.
There also appears to be a lack of clarity regarding the disposition of cattle with CNS symptoms while BSE tests are pending. In the past, companies could send cattle awaiting BSE testing results for rendering, which would allow their remains to be used in feed for animals other than ruminants, such as pigs and chickens. After this incident, both FDA and USDA policy appear to have changed - in different ways.
USDA policy has apparently shifted to requesting that companies not send cattle to rendering while awaiting test results. A May 5,2004 memo from APHIS states, "it is requested - though not required - that [the cattle] not go to inedible rendering until the sample comes back negative."9 here is no explanation of why this course of action is requested, but not required.
FDA policy also appears to have shifted towards prohibiting the use of carcasses of cattle with CNS symptoms and indeterminate BSE status in certain types of animal feed. On April 30, FDA requested that the rendering company holding the remains of the Texas cow either destroy them or use them exclusively in swine feed. In the case that the remains are included in swine feed, FDA "will track the material all the way through the supply chain from the processor to the farm to ensure that the feed is properly monitored and used only as feed for pigs."10
Any confusion over what to do with cattle condemned for CNS symptoms awaiting testing for BSE seems unnecessary. The obvious approach is to require companies either to destroy the carcasses or hold them until test results become available. Such a policy would avoid any need for complicated traceback procedures after the discovery of a positive result. According to the information provided to the Committee by USDA, the FSIS has condemned only 200 to 250 cows per year because of signs of central nervous system damage." Mandating the destruction or holding of their carcasses would have minimal economic impact.
The experience with the BSE-infected cow in Washington State illustrates the prudence of waiting for the results of BSE tests. Prior to December 2003, USDA permitted cattle that were sampled as part of the BSE surveillance program to enter commerce even while BSE tests were pending. As a result, when the BSE-infected cow was discovered, it had already entered the food supply. This led to a complicated and partially successful traceback procedure in which hundreds of thousands of pounds of beef had to be destroyed. Because of this debacle, USDA quickly developed a new policy to require holding all carcasses from the human food chain during BSE testing.
I appreciate that you have taken steps to enhance the safety of the U.S. food supply since the discovery of BSE in the United States. I urge you to consider the lessons of this latest Memo from John R. Clifford, Acting Deputy Administrator, Veterinary Services, and William Smith, Assistant Administrator, Office of Field Operations, Food Safety and Inspection Service, to VSMT, Regional Directors, Area Veterinarians in Charge, and Veterinary Services, Subject: Policy Statement Regarding BSE Sampling of Condemned Cattle at Slaughter Plants - for Immediate Implementation (May 5,2004) (online at http://www.aphis.usda.gov/lpa~issues/bse/BSE-APHIS-FSIS.pdf).
snip...please see full text and references ;
http://oversight.house.gov/documents/20040607142914-86912.pdf
and the rest is history ;
Owner and Corporation Plead Guilty to Defrauding Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE) Surveillance Program
An Arizona meat processing company and its owner pled guilty in February 2007 to charges of theft of Government funds, mail fraud, and wire fraud. The owner and his company defrauded the BSE Surveillance Program when they falsified BSE Surveillance Data Collection Forms and then submitted payment requests to USDA for the services. In addition to the targeted sample population (those cattle that were more than 30 months old or had other risk factors for BSE), the owner submitted to USDA, or caused to be submitted, BSE obex (brain stem) samples from healthy USDA-inspected cattle. As a result, the owner fraudulently received approximately $390,000. Sentencing is scheduled for May 2007.
snip...
Topics that will be covered in ongoing or planned reviews under Goal 1 include:
soundness of BSE maintenance sampling (APHIS),
implementation of Performance-Based Inspection System enhancements for specified risk material (SRM) violations and improved inspection controls over SRMs (FSIS and APHIS),
snip...
The findings and recommendations from these efforts will be covered in future semiannual reports as the relevant audits and investigations are completed.
4 USDA OIG SEMIANNUAL REPORT TO CONGRESS FY 2007 1st Half
http://www.usda.gov/oig/webdocs/sarc070619.pdf
Eurosurveillance, Volume 14, Issue 18, 07 May 2009 Perspectives Estimating the Global Burden of Foodborne Diseases - a collaborative effort T Kuchenmüller ()1, S Hird1, C Stein1, P Kramarz2, A Nanda2, A H Havelaar3 Department of Food Safety, Zoonoses and Foodborne Diseases, World Health Organization, Geneva, Switzerland European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, Stockholm, Sweden Laboratory for Zoonoses and Environmental Microbiology, National Institute for Public Health and the Environment, Bilthoven, the Netherlands
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Citation style for this article: Kuchenmüller T, Hird S, Stein C, Kramarz P, Nanda A, Havelaar AH. Estimating the Global Burden of Foodborne Diseases - a collaborative effort. Euro Surveill. 2009;14(18)
ii=19195. Available online: http://www.eurosurveillance.org/ViewArticle.aspx?ArticleId=19195
Date of submission: 08 February 2009
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Illness and death from diseases caused by unsafe food are a constant threat to public health security as well as socio-economic development throughout the world. The full extent of the burden and cost of foodborne diseases associated with pathogenic bacterial, viral and parasitic microorganisms, and food contaminated by chemicals is still unknown but is thought to be substantial. The World Health Organization (WHO) Initiative to estimate the global burden of foodborne diseases aims to fill the current data gap and respond to the increasing global interest in health information. Collaborative efforts are required to achieve the ambitious task of assessing the foodborne disease burden from all causes worldwide. Recognising the need to join forces, the WHO Initiative has assembled an alliance of stakeholders which share and support the Initiative's vision, intended objectives and outcomes. One important collaborator is the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) which has embarked on a burden of disease study covering at least 18 foodborne diseases in nearly 30 countries.
snip...
A recent publication in Nature has shown that approximately 30% of all emerging infections over the past 60 years were caused by pathogens commonly transmitted through food [10]. This trend is compounded by the growing industrialisation of food and feed production as well as intensive farming which catalyses the appearance and spread of pathogens (e.g. prions associated with Bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) leading to new variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD) in humans during the 1990s which was caused by the use of meat and bone meal in the production of animal feeds [11]).
see full text ;
http://www.eurosurveillance.org/ViewArticle.aspx?ArticleId=19195
USDA CERTIFIED SCHOOL LUNCH PROGRAM FROM DEAD STOCK DOWNER CATTLE UPDATE
IS THERE A SCRAPIE-LIKE DISEASE IN CATTLE ?
In April of 1985, a mink rancher in Wisconsin reported a debilitating neurologic disease in his herd which we diagnosed as TME by histopathologic findings confirmed by experimental transmission to mink and squirrel monkeys. The rancher was a ''dead stock'' feeder using mostly (>95%) downer or dead dairy cattle and a few horses. She had never been fed.
We believe that these findings may indicate the presence of a previously unrecognized scrapie-like disease in cattle and wish to alert dairy practitioners to this possibility.
snip...
PROCEEDINGS OF THE SEVENTH ANNUAL WESTERN CONFERENCE FOR FOOD ANIMAL VETERINARY MEDICINE, University of Arizona, March 17-19, 1986
http://www.bseinquiry.gov.uk/files/mb/m09a/tab01.pdf
http://www.bseinquiry.gov.uk/files/mb/m09/tab05.pdf
IS THERE A SCRAPIE-LIKE DISEASE IN CATTLE ?
YOU BET THERE IS, AND HAS BEEN, AND WE BEEN FEEDING THE MOST HIGH RISK I.E. DEAD STOCK DOWNER COWS TO OUR CHILDREN FOR DECADES, who will follow these children for human TSE from mad cow disease here in the USA in the years, decades to come, and how many will they expose from the 'pass it forward' friendly fire modes ???
http://downercattle.blogspot.com/2008/12/evaluation-of-fsis-management-controls.html
http://downercattle.blogspot.com/
AND ABOUT THAT HOLY GRAIL THAT WE ARE PREACHED TO ABOUT, THE INFAMOUS FDA MAD COW FEED BAN OF AUGUST 4, 1997, WELL, that was a sad joke, nothing but ink on paper, A BIG FAT LIE ;
10,000,000+ LBS. of PROHIBITED BANNED MAD COW FEED I.E. BLOOD LACED MBM IN COMMERCE USA 2007
Date: March 21, 2007 at 2:27 pm PST
RECALLS AND FIELD CORRECTIONS: VETERINARY MEDICINES -- CLASS II
___________________________________
PRODUCT
Bulk cattle feed made with recalled Darling's 85% Blood Meal, Flash Dried, Recall # V-024-2007
CODE
Cattle feed delivered between 01/12/2007 and 01/26/2007
RECALLING FIRM/MANUFACTURER
Pfeiffer, Arno, Inc, Greenbush, WI. by conversation on February 5, 2007.
Firm initiated recall is ongoing.
REASON
Blood meal used to make cattle feed was recalled because it was cross-contaminated with prohibited bovine meat and bone meal that had been manufactured on common equipment and labeling did not bear cautionary BSE statement.
VOLUME OF PRODUCT IN COMMERCE
42,090 lbs.
DISTRIBUTION
WI
___________________________________
PRODUCT
Custom dairy premix products: MNM ALL PURPOSE Pellet, HILLSIDE/CDL Prot-Buffer Meal, LEE, M.-CLOSE UP PX Pellet, HIGH DESERT/ GHC LACT Meal, TATARKA, M CUST PROT Meal, SUNRIDGE/CDL PROTEIN Blend, LOURENZO, K PVM DAIRY Meal, DOUBLE B DAIRY/GHC LAC Mineral, WEST PIONT/GHC CLOSEUP Mineral, WEST POINT/GHC LACT Meal, JENKS, J/COMPASS PROTEIN Meal, COPPINI - 8# SPECIAL DAIRY Mix, GULICK, L-LACT Meal (Bulk), TRIPLE J - PROTEIN/LACTATION, ROCK CREEK/GHC MILK Mineral, BETTENCOURT/GHC S.SIDE MK-MN, BETTENCOURT #1/GHC MILK MINR, V&C DAIRY/GHC LACT Meal, VEENSTRA, F/GHC LACT Meal, SMUTNY, A-BYPASS ML W/SMARTA, Recall # V-025-2007
CODE
The firm does not utilize a code - only shipping documentation with commodity and weights identified.
RECALLING FIRM/MANUFACTURER
Rangen, Inc, Buhl, ID, by letters on February 13 and 14, 2007. Firm initiated recall is complete.
REASON
Products manufactured from bulk feed containing blood meal that was cross contaminated with prohibited meat and bone meal and the labeling did not bear cautionary BSE statement.
VOLUME OF PRODUCT IN COMMERCE
9,997,976 lbs.
DISTRIBUTION
ID and NV
END OF ENFORCEMENT REPORT FOR MARCH 21, 2007
http://www.fda.gov/bbs/topics/enforce/2007/ENF00996.html
NEW URL
http://www.fda.gov/Safety/Recalls/EnforcementReports/2007/ucm120446.htm
Thursday, March 19, 2009
MILLIONS AND MILLIONS OF POUNDS OF MAD COW FEED IN COMMERCE USA WITH ONGOING 12 YEARS OF DENIAL NOW, WHY IN THE WORLD DO WE TO TALK ABOUT THIS ANYMORE $$$
http://madcowfeed.blogspot.com/2009/03/millions-and-millions-of-pounds-of-mad.html
http://madcowfeed.blogspot.com/2009/04/docket-no-fda2002n0031-formerly-docket.html
USDA: In 9,200 cases only one type of test could be used
WASHINGTON (AP)--The U.S. Department of Agriculture acknowledged Aug. 17 that its testing options for bovine spongiform encephalopathy were limited in 9,200 cases despite its effort to expand surveillance throughout the U.S. herd.
In those cases, only one type of test was used--one that failed to detect the disease in an infected Texas cow.
The department posted the information on its website because of an inquiry from The Associated Press.
Conducted over the past 14 months, the tests have not been included in the department's running tally of BSE tests since last summer. That total reached 439,126 on Aug. 17.
"There's no secret program," the department's chief veterinarian, John Clifford, said in an interview. "There has been no hiding, I can assure you of that."
Officials intended to report the tests later in an annual report, Clifford said.
These 9,200 cases were different because brain tissue samples were preserved with formalin, which makes them suitable for only one type of test--immunohistochemistry, or IHC.
In the Texas case, officials had declared the cow free of disease in November after an IHC test came back negative. The department's inspector general ordered an additional kind of test, which confirmed the animal was infected.
Veterinarians in remote locations have used the preservative on tissue to keep it from degrading on its way to the department's laboratory in Ames, Iowa. Officials this year asked veterinarians to stop using preservative and send fresh or chilled samples within 48 hours.
The department recently investigated a possible case of BSE that turned up in a preserved sample. Further testing ruled out the disease two weeks ago.
Scientists used two additional tests--rapid screening and Western blot--to help detect BSE in the country's second confirmed case, in a Texas cow in June. They used IHC and Western blot to confirm the first case, in a Washington state cow in December 2003.
"The IHC test is still an excellent test," Clifford said. "These are not simple tests, either."
Clifford pointed out that scientists reran the IHC several times and got conflicting results. That happened, too, with the Western blot test. Both tests are accepted by international animal health officials.
Date: 8/25/05
http://www.hpj.com/archives/2005/aug05/aug29/BSEtestoptionswerelimited.cfm
""These 9,200 cases were different because brain tissue samples were preserved with formalin, which makes them suitable for only one type of test--immunohistochemistry, or IHC."
THIS WAS DONE FOR A REASON!
THE IHC test has been proven to be the LEAST LIKELY to detect BSE/TSE in the bovine, and these were probably from the most high risk cattle pool, the ones the USDA et al, SHOULD have been testing. ...TSS
USDA 2003
We have to be careful that we don't get so set in the way we do things that we forget to look for different emerging variations of disease. We've gotten away from collecting the whole brain in our systems. We're using the brain stem and we're looking in only one area. In Norway, they were doing a project and looking at cases of Scrapie, and they found this where they did not find lesions or PRP in the area of the obex. They found it in the cerebellum and the cerebrum. It's a good lesson for us. Ames had to go back and change the procedure for looking at Scrapie samples. In the USDA, we had routinely looked at all the sections of the brain, and then we got away from it. They've recently gone back. Dr. Keller: Tissues are routinely tested, based on which tissue provides an 'official' test result as recognized by APHIS.
Dr. Detwiler: That's on the slaughter. But on the clinical cases, aren't they still asking for the brain? But even on the slaughter, they're looking only at the brainstem. We may be missing certain things if we confine ourselves to one area.
snip.............
Dr. Detwiler: It seems a good idea, but I'm not aware of it. Another important thing to get across to the public is that the negatives do not guarantee absence of infectivity. The animal could be early in the disease and the incubation period. Even sample collection is so important. If you're not collecting the right area of the brain in sheep, or if collecting lymphoreticular tissue, and you don't get a good biopsy, you could miss the area with the PRP in it and come up with a negative test. There's a new, unusual form of Scrapie that's been detected in Norway. We have to be careful that we don't get so set in the way we do things that we forget to look for different emerging variations of disease. We've gotten away from collecting the whole brain in our systems. We're using the brain stem and we're looking in only one area. In Norway, they were doing a project and looking at cases of Scrapie, and they found this where they did not find lesions or PRP in the area of the obex. They found it in the cerebellum and the cerebrum. It's a good lesson for us. Ames had to go back and change the procedure for looking at Scrapie samples. In the USDA, we had routinely looked at all the sections of the brain, and then we got away from it. They've recently gone back.
Dr. Keller: Tissues are routinely tested, based on which tissue provides an 'official' test result as recognized by APHIS .
Dr. Detwiler: That's on the slaughter. But on the clinical cases, aren't they still asking for the brain? But even on the slaughter, they're looking only at the brainstem. We may be missing certain things if we confine ourselves to one area.
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FULL TEXT;
Completely Edited Version PRION ROUNDTABLE
Accomplished this day, Wednesday, December 11, 2003, Denver, Colorado
2005
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CDC DR. PAUL BROWN TSE EXPERT COMMENTS 2006
The U.S. Department of Agriculture was quick to assure the public earlier this week that the third case of mad cow disease did not pose a risk to them, but what federal officials have not acknowledged is that this latest case indicates the deadly disease has been circulating in U.S. herds for at least a decade.
The second case, which was detected last year in a Texas cow and which USDA officials were reluctant to verify, was approximately 12 years old.
These two cases (the latest was detected in an Alabama cow) present a picture of the disease having been here for 10 years or so, since it is thought that cows usually contract the disease from contaminated feed they consume as calves. The concern is that humans can contract a fatal, incurable, brain-wasting illness from consuming beef products contaminated with the mad cow pathogen.
"The fact the Texas cow showed up fairly clearly implied the existence of other undetected cases," Dr. Paul Brown, former medical director of the National Institutes of Health's Laboratory for Central Nervous System Studies and an expert on mad cow-like diseases, told United Press International. "The question was, 'How many?' and we still can't answer that."
Brown, who is preparing a scientific paper based on the latest two mad cow cases to estimate the maximum number of infected cows that occurred in the United States, said he has "absolutely no confidence in USDA tests before one year ago" because of the agency's reluctance to retest the Texas cow that initially tested positive.
USDA officials finally retested the cow and confirmed it was infected seven months later, but only at the insistence of the agency's inspector general.
"Everything they did on the Texas cow makes everything USDA did before 2005 suspect," Brown said. ...snip...end
http://www.upi.com/
CDC - Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy and Variant Creutzfeldt ... Dr. Paul Brown is Senior Research Scientist in the Laboratory of Central Nervous System ... Address for correspondence: Paul Brown, Building 36, Room 4A-05, ...
http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/eid/vol7no1/brown.htm
http://www.fsis.usda.gov/OPPDE/Comments/03-025IFA
THE SEVEN SCIENTIST REPORT ***
http://www.fda.gov/ohrms/dockets/dockets/02n0273/02n-0273-EC244-Attach-1.pdf
TSS
