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BSE in USA WAS IMMINENT

Mike

Well-known member
Expert Warned That Mad Cow Was Imminent
by Sandra Blakeslee


Ever since he identified the bizarre brain-destroying proteins that cause mad cow disease, Dr. Stanley Prusiner, a neurologist at the University of California at San Francisco, has worried about whether the meat supply in America is safe.

He spoke over the years of the need to increase testing and safety measures. Then in May, a case of mad cow disease appeared in Canada, and he quickly sought a meeting with Ann M. Veneman, the secretary of agriculture. He was rebuffed, he said in an interview yesterday, until he ran into Karl Rove, senior adviser to President Bush.

So six weeks ago, Dr. Prusiner, who won the 1997 Nobel Prize in Medicine for his work on prions, entered Ms. Veneman's office with a message. "I went to tell her that what happened in Canada was going to happen in the United States," Dr. Prusiner said. "I told her it was just a matter of time."

The department had been willfully blind to the threat, he said. The only reason mad cow disease had not been found here, he said, is that the department's animal inspection agency was testing too few animals. Once more cows are tested, he added, "we'll be able to understand the magnitude of our problem."

This nation should immediately start testing every cow that shows signs of illness and eventually every single cow upon slaughter, he said he told Ms. Veneman. Japan has such a program and is finding the disease in young asymptomatic animals.

Fast, accurate and inexpensive tests are available, Dr. Prusiner said, including one that he has patented through his university.

Ms. Veneman's response (he said she did not share his sense of urgency) left him frustrated. That frustration soared this week after a cow in Washington State was tentatively found to have the disease. If the nation had increased testing and inspections, meat from that cow might never have entered the food chain, he said.

Ms. Veneman was not available for interviews yesterday, and the White House referred all questions to the department. A spokeswoman for Ms. Veneman, Julie Quick, said: "We have met with many experts in this area, including Dr. Prusiner. We welcome as much scientific input and insight as we can get on this very important issue. We want to make sure that our actions are based on the best available science."

In Dr. Prusiner's view, Ms. Veneman is getting poor scientific advice. "U.S.D.A. scientists and veterinarians, who grew up learning about viruses, have difficulty comprehending the novel concepts of prion biology," he said. "They treat the disease as if it were an infection that you can contain by quarantining animals on farms. It's as though my work of the last 20 years did not exist."

Scientists have long been fascinated by a group of diseases, called spongiform encephalopathies, that eat away at the brain, causing madness and death. The leading theory was that they were caused by a slow-acting virus. But in 1988, Dr. Prusiner proposed a theory that seemed heretical at the time: the infectious agent was simply a type of protein, which he called prions.

Prions (pronounced PREE-ons), he and others went on to establish, are proteins that as a matter of course can misfold — that is, fold themselves into alternative shapes that have lethal properties — and cause a runaway reaction in nervous tissue. As more misfolded proteins accumulate, they kill nerve cells.

Animals that eat infected tissues can contract the disease, setting off an epidemic as animals eat each other via rendered meats. But misfolded proteins can also arise spontaneously in cattle and other animals, Dr. Prusiner said. It is not known whether meat from animals with that form of the disease could pass the disease to humans, he said, but it is a risk that greatly worries him.

Cattle with sporadic disease are probably entering the food chain in the United States in small numbers, Dr. Prusiner and other experts say.

Brain tissue from the newly discovered dairy cow in Washington is now being tested in Britain to see if it matches prion strains that caused the mad cow epidemic there, or if it is a homegrown American sporadic strain, Dr. Prusiner said.

"The problem is we just don't know the size of the problem," he said. "We don't know the prevalence or incidence of the disease."

The Japanese experience is instructive, Dr. Prusiner said. Three and a half years ago, that country identified its first case of mad cow disease. The government then said it would begin testing all cows older than 30 months, as they do in Europe. Older animals presumably have a greater chance of showing the disease, Dr. Prusiner said.

Japanese consumer groups protested and the government then said it would test every cow upon slaughter, Dr. Prusiner said. The Japanese have 4 million cattle and slaughter 1.2 million of them each year. The United States has 100 million cattle and kills 35 million a year.

Early this fall, Japanese surveillance found two new cases of the disease in young animals, aged 21 and 23 months. "Under no testing regime except Japan would these cases ever be found," he said.

The 23-month-old cow tested borderline positive using two traditional tests. But the surveillance team then looked in a different part of the brain using an advanced research technique and found a huge signal for infectious material, Dr. Prusiner said. It was a different strain of the disease, possibly a sporadic case.

The only way to learn what the United States is facing is to test every animal, Dr. Prusiner said. Existing methods, used widely in Europe and Japan, grind up brain stem tissue and use an enzyme to measure amounts of infectious prions. Animals must have lots of bad prions to get a clear diagnosis.

Newer tests, by a variety of companies, are more sensitive, cheaper and faster. Dr. Prusiner said that his test could even detect extremely small amounts of infectious prion in very young animals with no symptoms. Sold by InPro Biotechnology in South San Francisco, a single testing operation could process 8,000 samples in 24 hours, he said.

British health officials will start using the test in February, Dr. Prusiner said. If adopted in this country, it would raise the price of a pound of meat by two to three cents, he said.

"We want to keep prions out of the mouths of humans," Dr. Prusiner said. "We don't know what they might be doing to us."

His laboratory is working on promising treatments for the human form of mad cow disease but preventing its spread is just as important, he said. "Science is capable of finding out how serious the problem is," he said, "but only government can mandate the solutions."
 

TimH

Well-known member
Fast, accurate and inexpensive tests are available, Dr. Prusiner said, including one that he has patented through his university.

Exactly!!! :roll: Ka-Ching!!!!!$$$$$$$!!!!!! :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll:
 

Econ101

Well-known member
TimH said:
Fast, accurate and inexpensive tests are available, Dr. Prusiner said, including one that he has patented through his university.

Exactly!!! :roll: Ka-Ching!!!!!$$$$$$$!!!!!! :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll:

TimH what does that mean? Are you willing to deny anyone from bse testing on thier own or to have the govt. drag its feet on approving tests?
 

Mike

Well-known member
TimH said:
Fast, accurate and inexpensive tests are available, Dr. Prusiner said, including one that he has patented through his university.

Exactly!!! :roll: Ka-Ching!!!!!$$$$$$$!!!!!! :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll:

Almost all of the experts have procedures patented through their respective University's. Nothing new here. The Universities NEED to get paid back for the research that was funded by the government.

Patents are the lifeline of University research.
 

TimH

Well-known member
Econ101 said:
TimH said:
Fast, accurate and inexpensive tests are available, Dr. Prusiner said, including one that he has patented through his university.

Exactly!!! :roll: Ka-Ching!!!!!$$$$$$$!!!!!! :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll:

TimH what does that mean? Are you willing to deny anyone from bse testing on thier own or to have the govt. drag its feet on approving tests?

It means, Oh Wise One, that Prusiner owns patents on BSE tests and certain lab procedures. He stands to profit,big-time, if their use is mandated by governments.
Of course he is going to try to fear monger his way into 100% te$ting.
Try to keep up,OK Econo-stud. Perhaps you should try to broaden the scope of your thinking. Wizard. :roll: :roll: :roll:
 

Mike

Well-known member
TimH said:
Econ101 said:
TimH said:
Exactly!!! :roll: Ka-Ching!!!!!$$$$$$$!!!!!! :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll:

TimH what does that mean? Are you willing to deny anyone from bse testing on thier own or to have the govt. drag its feet on approving tests?

It means, Oh Wise One, that Prusiner owns patents on BSE tests and certain lab procedures. He stands to profit,big-time, if their use is mandated by governments.
Of course he is going to try to fear monger his way into 100% te$ting.
Try to keep up,OK Econo-stud. Perhaps you should try to broaden the scope of your thinking. Wizard. :roll: :roll: :roll:

The "UNIVERSITY" of California at San Francisco owns the patents. When faculty works at a school the school itself owns the patent.
 

TimH

Well-known member
Mike said:
TimH said:
Econ101 said:
TimH what does that mean? Are you willing to deny anyone from bse testing on thier own or to have the govt. drag its feet on approving tests?

It means, Oh Wise One, that Prusiner owns patents on BSE tests and certain lab procedures. He stands to profit,big-time, if their use is mandated by governments.
Of course he is going to try to fear monger his way into 100% te$ting.
Try to keep up,OK Econo-stud. Perhaps you should try to broaden the scope of your thinking. Wizard. :roll: :roll: :roll:

The "UNIVERSITY" of California at San Francisco owns the patents. When faculty works at a school the school itself owns the patent.

And that changes what , Mikey??? So Prusiner's research team gets more funding. Maybe good old "Don" Stanley himself gets a raise. The fact remains that there is money to be made in selling tests. Cattle producers will end up paying for them whether they are needed or not. Just another grubby little finger in MY pie as far as I am concerned.
Compare it to the Dow Chemical/ R-12 refridgerant fiasco, Mike, and quit being such a TURD!! :wink:
 

Mike

Well-known member
TimH said:
Mike said:
TimH said:
It means, Oh Wise One, that Prusiner owns patents on BSE tests and certain lab procedures. He stands to profit,big-time, if their use is mandated by governments.
Of course he is going to try to fear monger his way into 100% te$ting.
Try to keep up,OK Econo-stud. Perhaps you should try to broaden the scope of your thinking. Wizard. :roll: :roll: :roll:

The "UNIVERSITY" of California at San Francisco owns the patents. When faculty works at a school the school itself owns the patent.

And that changes what , Mikey??? So Prusiner's research team gets more funding. Maybe good old "Don" Stanley himself gets a raise. The fact remains that there is money to be made in selling tests. Cattle producers will end up paying for them whether they are needed or not. Just another grubby little finger in MY pie as far as I am concerned.
Compare it to the Dow Chemical/ R-12 refridgerant fiasco, Mike, and quit being such a TURD!! :wink:

I happen to believe that we should test every dang animal that hits the kill floor, to get a true handle on the situation and reverse consumer concern. Do you trust the USDA?
 

TimH

Well-known member
Mike said:
TimH said:
Mike said:
The "UNIVERSITY" of California at San Francisco owns the patents. When faculty works at a school the school itself owns the patent.

And that changes what , Mikey??? So Prusiner's research team gets more funding. Maybe good old "Don" Stanley himself gets a raise. The fact remains that there is money to be made in selling tests. Cattle producers will end up paying for them whether they are needed or not. Just another grubby little finger in MY pie as far as I am concerned.
Compare it to the Dow Chemical/ R-12 refridgerant fiasco, Mike, and quit being such a TURD!! :wink:

I happen to believe that we should test every dang animal that hits the kill floor, to get a true handle on the situation and reverse consumer concern. Do you trust the USDA?

:lol: :lol: :lol:
What "consumer concern"???? Per-capita beef consumption actually INCREASED, at least in Canada, after BSE was first detected in '03. WHY?? Because the price was right. What did domestic beef consumption do in the States, post BSE? I'm pretty sure it either stayed static or increased as well.
This "consumer concern" is just more "bull$hit" from the snake-oilers that are trying to sell test kits.........and don't even mention Japan because that is politics and nothing more.
Prusiner stands to profit, directly or indirectly, from selling BSE tests. In order to sell them he needs to create fear over BSE. It's that simple.
WAKE UP, you Turd!!! :wink:
 

Econ101

Well-known member
TimH., who said anything about 100% testing? Creekstone is not 100%. If Creekstone (or anyone else) wanted to test, they should be allowed to. Heck, what is wrong with Creekstone's customers paying for the tests, that just means there are more tests for the tally and not on taxpayer's dime.
 

RoperAB

Well-known member
Tim , consumer demand went up in Canada for beef during BSE because
#1 We were totaly honest with the public about BSE and what we were doing about it and we reassured the public that it was safe.
#2 Joe public bought extra beef as a way of showing support to the beef industry in Canada. In Alberta the BSE crisses was all that everybody includeing all the media was talking about. There were beef on a bun barbecues everywhere. A lot of musicians did concerts. A lot of beef was basically bought as charity and every beef producer in Canada should be thankful for the support. It was the first time (and only as far as I know)any nation with BSE ever had beef sales increase after BSE was found.
 

RoperAB

Well-known member
Also it would have been damn hard for Canadian beef producers to export beef to other countries if Canadians did not trust it and were not eating it.
 

Murgen

Well-known member
Also it would have been damn hard for Canadian beef producers to export beef to other countries if Canadians did not trust it and were not eating it.

Very much opposite in the US, where you have Beef groups questioning the safety of beef and the USDA, MID, and everything else about the business.
 
A

Anonymous

Guest
Murgen said:
Also it would have been damn hard for Canadian beef producers to export beef to other countries if Canadians did not trust it and were not eating it.

Very much opposite in the US, where you have Beef groups questioning the safety of beef and the USDA, MID, and everything else about the business.

Murgen- It isn't your so called Beef groups questioning the safety of beef and the USDA--Even an article about Japans case causes questions of the US's policys.....USDA has killed more consumer confidence than anyone else.....

-----------------------------

Japan Confirms 26th Mad Cow Disease Case
By Ben Wasserman
May 13, 2006, 14:46


May 13 (foodconsumer.org) - Japan has confirmed its 26th case of mad cow disease in a 5-year-old dairy cow in the country's northern province of Hokkaido, The Associated Press reported, citing the Agriculture Ministry as saying Saturday.

Meat inspectors found Thursday that the cow tested positive for the disease and a panel of Agriculture Ministry experts confirmed the infection Saturday. No part of the sick cow got into food or feed chains, the ministry said in a statement.

The new mad cow disease case was confirmed as Japanese and U.S. officials prepare to meet as early as next week to discuss the Japanese ban on US beef. The ban was initiated in December 2003 after the US confirmed its firs case of mad cow disease.

The ban was eased last December to allow imports of US beef from cows aged 20 months or younger, which are believed to have a lower risk of contracting mad cow disease.

The import restriction was re-imposed in January after a shipment of US beef was found to carry risky parts such as backbone, which are believed to be likely carriers of contagious agents of mad cow disease.

In Japan, every cow intended for human consumption are subject to tests for mad cow disease. In contrast, the US does not test any cows unless the cow is so sick that it could not walk into the slaughterhouse or there are signs indicate the cow may suffer the mad cow disease.

In fact, the US prohibits any private testing for mad cow disease saying that only the USDA has the authority to do the test. Because of this, no one virtually knows for sure if cows entering the food chain suffer mad cow disease.

The Japanese feel uneasy about the US practice. They have found that if they followed the US protocol to test cows for mad cow disease, a large percentage of cases would have missed. That is why Japan has repeatedly rejected the US appeal for opening its beef market to the US beef products.


Eating beef tainted with mad cow disease can cause fatal human variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, a human form of mad cow disease for which there is no cure.

There have been three confirmed cases of mad cow disease two cases of human variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in the United States.
 

Sandhusker

Well-known member
Tim, "And that changes what , Mikey??? So Prusiner's research team gets more funding. Maybe good old "Don" Stanley himself gets a raise. The fact remains that there is money to be made in selling tests. Cattle producers will end up paying for them whether they are needed or not. Just another grubby little finger in MY pie as far as I am concerned. "

How is it a finger in YOUR pie? Prusiner was advocating testing in the US. Last I was in Manitoba, there was a Maple Leaf on the flag pole.
 
A

Anonymous

Guest
TimH said:
And that changes what , Mikey??? So Prusiner's research team gets more funding. Maybe good old "Don" Stanley himself gets a raise. The fact remains that there is money to be made in selling tests. Cattle producers will end up paying for them whether they are needed or not. Just another grubby little finger in MY pie as far as I am concerned.
Compare it to the Dow Chemical/ R-12 refridgerant fiasco, Mike, and quit being such a TURD!! :wink:

And you have to look at who is standing to gain with Mandatory ID too- tag makers, data base companies, NCBA, USDA, etc. all at the expense of the cattle producer.... All using disease and terrorism to promote a fear to further their profits or expand their power base from ---No difference......
 

Manitoba_Rancher

Well-known member
Yup Sandhusker, theres a Maple Leaf on our flag!! But there are a pile of American hunters buying land about 50 miles north of here just so they can hunt on it.... :???: :?
 
A

Anonymous

Guest
Manitoba_Rancher said:
Yup Sandhusker, theres a Maple Leaf on our flag!! But there are a pile of American hunters buying land about 50 miles north of here just so they can hunt on it.... :???: :?

Good thats one pile less buying it down here to hunt on :wink:
 

Manitoba_Rancher

Well-known member
This land they are buying would normally sell for $15000 a 1/4 section and they are paying up to $90,000 for it.....just crazy what some of these guys from down there will pay..
 

TimH

Well-known member
Sandhusker said:
Tim, "And that changes what , Mikey??? So Prusiner's research team gets more funding. Maybe good old "Don" Stanley himself gets a raise. The fact remains that there is money to be made in selling tests. Cattle producers will end up paying for them whether they are needed or not. Just another grubby little finger in MY pie as far as I am concerned. "

How is it a finger in YOUR pie? Prusiner was advocating testing in the US. Last I was in Manitoba, there was a Maple Leaf on the flag pole.

Sandhusker, When and where were you ever in Manitoba?? Were you here and you never stopped in to say Hello??? I'm hurt. :wink: In the little town where I get my mail there are 3 flags flying. A Maple Leaf, A Manitoba Bison, and The Stars and Stripes, in recognition of many decades of cross border trade, friendship and support in troubled times.Don't believe me??? I'll post a picture if you like. I also buy a lot supplies in Bottineau, North Dakota(a 40 minute drive). I know of several CDN flags flying there.The business owners there are glad to see me and treat me very well.I can actually buy ice cream down there, made with REAL CREAM(unlike the crap we get here,but thats another story). :roll:
Prusiner is trying to sell tests.Period. It matters not which side of the border those sales numbers come from. Don't kid yourself. The cost of BSE testing will follow the path of least resistance......which is DOWN to the cow/calf producer. That is MY pie.Retail beef prices are already up against the "brick wall" that is chicken/pork.Testing costs CANNOT be passed upstream.Consumers will simply stop buying(a given amount of) beef if the price of testing is added to their cost. Anyone that thinks otherwise is sadly mistaken.
Surely a "financier", such as yourself, can understand this simple fact. :)
 
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