bse-tester said:
There appears to be some heavy reliance on the statements being put forward here that indicate that the only way to provide "Safe Beef" is to remove all Specific Risk MAterials (SRM's) from the human food chain. Whereas this indeed does help, it does not mean that the animal from which they were taken is completely free of BSE. If we remove the spinal cord and associated tissues, the eyes, the brain and the lymphatic nodes and all the rest of the specified materials, what is left may be considered prion free - and, my friends, that is absolutely not true! Only a fool would make the assumption that the animal that can secrete prions with it urine, just like you and I do every day, will no longer have any prions in its system once the SRM's are removed. Consider this: The BSE Prion (PrPsc) moves through the entire body with the help of the blood system. It is carried through literally, the entire animal and simply manifests itself in certain areas in larger quantities than elsewhere. We find it in meat homogenate, in urine, in blood and in brain and also spinal fluids. The whole argument surrounding this magic date of 30 months has evolved from the incubation period and literally has been taken to mean something else entirely. It certainly means that an animal that has BSE will likely display symptoms post-30 months and not usually before. Having said that, the animal that is infected, may have acquired the BSE Prion well before the age of 30 months and should be considered as totally unfit for human consumption as the prion will simply pass to the human who may develop the variant strain of BSE we call nvCJD. The answers does indeed come to us through a strict testing program providing that the test is priced reasonably and yet, what price do we place on the lives of our families?? Tam, perhaps you can answer that without putting forth your conspiracy theories about what is a fraud or a sham? Not looking to upset you but to engage you in a good debate, so please do not take any personal offense as none is intended at all. This is why we have spent the last two years working hard to prove our test and now that we have, we are hoping to get it validated and the EFSA in Brussels has provided their support to us in a number of ways to help us do precisely that because we know our test can identify prion disease in urine, but we are being careful not to blow our horn too loud as yet, until we get it approved. Ron.
Ron you have a funny way about putting someone at eaze in a debate with the kind of comments you started you question with. :wink:
But as calmly as I can type I will ask you, are you calling all the experts in the OIE and other experts in countries that have dealt with BSE longer than Canada and the US put together, that have told us that removing the SRM is the first line of defence and what removes the
risk of contracting vCJD from eating beef, Fools? I'm just going by what our governments are telling us they are being told by the OIE experts. I have also read both the Canadian and US reports back from the OIE on the investigations into BSE in North America, where they have stated this in writing. I have also looked up some of the BSE prion in muscle meat theroies and what I have read coming out of the UK and EU is their experts have not found prions in the muscle. Are they Fools? I have read that Japan has not found BSE in under twenty month old animals and a very limited amounts in animals under thirty months.
Some say BSE causes vCJD and now it has been implied that it also causes CJD but no body has proved either theroy.
Some say BSE is caused by the enviroment, some by feeding ruminant to ruminant, some say it just happens and some say it is contagous because of body fluid. Lets look at the causes first.
If it is the enviroment why aren't there hot beds with more than one case showing up from the same enviroment?
If it is feed then if we stop feeding ruminant to ruminant then we should see a decline in cases. Well come to think of it we have seen large deceases after feed bans were implimented haven't we?
If it just happens then that would explain where the first case came from but if it just happens then isn't it safe to say it could happen to any animal no matter how it was raised?
Then there is the theroy that says it is contagious and again if so why are we not seeing more than one animal in a herd contracting BSE? We put down over two thousand head of cattle that had come into contact with the May 2003 cow and never found it in another animal.
First I will say good luck with your research but if the BSE prion is in the unine and a cow pees in a pasture and another cow eats the grass again why aren't we seeing more than one case coming from a single herd? Shouldn't we be seeing muliple cases coming from that pasture? When will we have the answers backed up with the results we have seen with the feed ban theroy, on some of these other theroies. Until then they are just un-proven research material and ways to scare people into not trusting beef.
I do hope the research continues and finds the answers but in the world we live in right now we have proof that the MBM feed bans work to stop the spread of BSE that is why we implimented the precautionary measure of a MBM Feed ban back in 1997.
We know with the current world testing protocol and years of test results that BSE does not show up in animals younger than 20 months and very few in animals under thirty months in test result. So why test all of them and tell the consumer we tested it for their safety, when we should be testing the older animals where the test actually may show us results we can use in designing other safeguards to protect our consumers. And Yes we remove the SRM as that is where the BSE prions have been found by all experts and we do this as a PRECAUTIONARY measure because we still don't have proof that they are not what causes vCJD in humans so why take a chance in eating them?
Just how much consumer confidence do you think will remain in our product if we went around telling consumer that we can not guarantee their safety if they eat beef as the test we use is not good enough and the SRM removal doesn't remove the risk of contracting vCJD. and then told them "The answers does indeed come to us through a strict testing program providing that the test is priced reasonably" but as of yet we only have a two year old research project that may or may not get approval. Do you really think our consumers care about the price of the test if it according to you is the only way to know for sure an animal is BSE free. I know by your posts that you are on here selling something but the beef industry's survival depends on the safeguards we have put in place and the confidence we have in those safeguards.
