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FMD "Blowin in the Wind"

Mike

Well-known member
Over 10 MILLION animals were sacrificed during this outbreak. :???:



9-10-01

Foot-and-mouth could have blown to UK from the Sahara

Britain's foot and mouth epidemic may have been caused by a cloud of infected
dust blown from the Sahara, say scientists.

They have linked the outbreak to a massive plume of sand that swirled out of
northern Africa several days before the disease was first reported.

The soil there is contaminated with microbes and faeces.

Dr Dale Griffin, of the US Geological Survey, told the Observer: "Satellite
images show a dust cloud moving over the Atlantic and reaching Britain on 13
February. One week later, foot and mouth broke out in the UK.

"Given that the disease's incubation period is seven days, that is one heck of a
coincidence."

Dr Eugene Shinn, another US geological survey scientist, said: "There is no
sewage treatment or proper garbage disposal there - so the soil is heavily
infected with microbes and faeces.

"Cattle there are also infected with the same viral strain, type O, that is
causing foot and mouth in Britain."

Storms frequently carry dust from the Sahara to Britain and their incidence is
increasing, thanks to climate changes.

For years, researchers assumed bacteria, viruses and fungi caught up in such
clouds would be sterilised by the sun's ultraviolet rays. But now scientists
have discovered they may be finding protection against radiation by clinging to
dust and sand particles.

Dr Griffin and his team analysed several dust clouds, and found a wide range of
plant and human pathogens. Crucially, these samples were obtained by making
cultures. "Only live organisms can generate cultures, which shows we are dealing
with microbes that are still infectious after their Atlantic crossing," he said.

See this story on the web at http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_393887.html
 

Mike

Well-known member
Actions Taken to Date.

As some of you may know, on Friday, May 4, we, Teri Nilson Baird (CO)
and Marsharee Wilcox (MD), met with legislative staff of a number of
Senators on Capitol Hill to discuss FMDV. Everyone we met with seemed very
receptive to what we had to say. We discussed the current USDA
Emergency Response Plan and the shortcomings we see in the current Plan.
We pointed out how "non-traditional" livestock now exist in the US and that
there is no species-specific risk assessment considered in the Plan.
We discussed the need for species susceptibility (or lack thereof) reviews,
consideration of regional risk factors (eg, the virus would not live as
well in a hot dry climate vs a cool, wet one), the impact of animals
raised for the food chain vs nonfood animals and exportation vs non-exported
livestock. We feel we made headway and got agreement that the USDA "one
size fits all" approach currently being taken is inadequate, unfair, and
will potentially bring on dramatic economic hardship for many people and
unnecessary loss of life.

We learned in March Senator Tom Daschle from SD wrote to Senator Lugar
of IN (Chairman, Agriculture Committee) asking him to hold hearings on the
USDA's response plan. He also signed on to a "Dear Colleague" letter
from Senator Ben Nighthorse Campbell (CO) recommending a more broad federal
involvement than USDA just planning a response. We were told by Senator
Wayne Allard's (CO) (one of two vets in the Senate) staff that the bill
sponsored by Senator Campbell was done out of concern that the USDA
retained a significant amount of power with the current plan and they
think some of the power should be shifted. That bill passed the Senate and
is awaiting House action.
They are also trying to get an exception made by
President Bush so they can work on this within a task force and avoid
the bureaucratic log jam that may otherwise take place.

We asked all of the contacts we made to re-examine the plan in light of
the many changes in bio-technology, the availability of quick turnaround
testing and synthetic vaccines, and the differing kinds of livestock
being raised as well as quarantine possibilities in the
event of an outbreak.
Most admitted they had never thought about the variety of livestock that
would be impacted, climate factors or carrier risk of various species.
We specifically educated them on the Camelid research that points to the
fact that they are a "low risk" species and requested quarantine be
officially noted as an option for Camelids. Most indicated they would
call the USDA or APHIS on our behalf to question the points that we
brought to their attention.

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

Additional Federal Action Needed.

We have much more we all need to do. We did not provide information to
every Senator, rather concentrated mainly on those on the Committee on
Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry. Since each Senator is responsible
primarily to their own constituency, we think it would be most effective
to have someone from each state write a letter to each Senator from their
state. These need to be sent via snail mail rather than email, or perhaps
both, but not exclusively by email. We don't want to "over-paper" the
Senate and the House, at least at this point, with lots of duplicate
information, so it probably makes sense to mount a coordinated effort
with one person writing from each state.
 

Kathy

Well-known member
Mike, I believe we had this conversation before. At least I did with Porker, where-in he said the possibility of this stuff coming over on the wind from another continent was BS.

I disagree. This is how the depleted uranium and other "agents" are getting around the world also.

Blowing in the Wind is the name of am Australian documentary on DU.

However, having said this is a possibility. It is also very possible that the foot and mouth outbreak in the UK was sabatoge by the UK government to cover-up their increasing numbers of cattle born after the reinforced feed bans (BARBs) - as none of the animals with Foot and Mouth disease were tested for BSE.

If you do a search on the foot and mouth and a missing vile of the stuff from a UK lab, in 2000, you'll get a few hits. This is an exerpt from one of them:

In August/September 2000, the company United Biomedical Inc. (UBI) based in the USA had conducted tests on a vaccine for FMD Type O. That is the strain involved in the disease outbreak in the UK (1).

UBI announced on its website www.unitedbiomedical.com, “We have vaccinated pigs, challenged them with infectious FMDV (foot and mouth disease virus), and successfully protected almost all of them (45 of 46 animals) from viral infection and out-performed the commercial product. This has been done by four government laboratories on three continents.”

The Sunday Express reported in April that a routine audit in the UK Government’s bio-warfare research laboratory at Porton Down, Wiltshire, revealed that a container of foot and mouth virus was missing two months before the first official outbreak. The newspaper also claims it has seen documents confirming that some sheep carried the virus long before the outbreak was confirmed on February 20, 2001. A Welsh vet says the virus was in Wales as early as January (5).

....
Was the outbreak caused by the FMDV used to challenge vaccinated animals, either the strain from Porton Down or the virulent strain resulting from serial passage in pigs which has escaped from one of the labs? Could it have been due to the virus from infected pigs escaping, or to an entirely new virus generated by recombination between the challenge virus and the vaccine? These questions could easily be answered by molecular genetic analysis of the virus or viruses from infected livestock in the outbreak.

But why are governments interested to test foot and mouth vaccines around the world when there have not been major outbreaks in any of the countries? Britain had not had the disease for 34 years, and the USA and Canada had not been affected since 1929.

Link: http://www.greens.org/s-r/27/27-16.html

If an animal is diagnosed with a highly infectious disease, like FMD, the labs will not go further to test for BSE. CASE CLOSED!
 
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