Mooooooooooooooooooooo

Pherr the Dorf · Post by **Pherr the Dorf** » December 24, 2003, 4:11 pm

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3797510

Our past trading rules are gonna bite us in the ass with this one, expect 8 years of no beef exports incoming.

miir · Post by **miir** » December 25, 2003, 12:10 am

Canada has rightfully jumped on the 'ban american beef' bandwagon.

kyoukan · Post by **kyoukan** » December 25, 2003, 4:46 am

Canada only put a partial ban on US beef. I was personally wishing for a full ban to shove it back in the US beef industry's face for being the first to sieze the financial opportunity of being the first to ban Canadian beef. Turnabout is fair play in my opinion, but I guess our government is classier than theirs.

I was watching it on the news on TV tonight and I was cracking up at the president of the american beef council saying that one cow isn't a very big deal and everyone is overreacting and everything is perfectly safe, when this was the same guy screaming bloody murder about banning Canadian beef last spring. This will be good for canadian beef farmers now they won't have to compete with subsidized US factory farmers for awhile. With any luck it will bring out reforms in the ghastly way US factory farmers are allowed to raise their livestock and what they are allowed to feed them.

Winnow · Post by **Winnow** » December 25, 2003, 7:22 am

End result: Canadian Beef prices rise, grats canucks! ..and US beef prices drop due to lots of beef that can't be exported now. Grats US!

valryte · Post by **valryte** » December 25, 2003, 11:57 am

God forbid a country bans the import of a food if a case of contamination occurs. It's not like a country has the right to protect it's people and see how widespread it is before they resume importing.

miir · Post by **miir** » December 25, 2003, 1:24 pm

End result: Canadian Beef prices rise, grats canucks! ..and US beef prices drop due to lots of beef that can't be exported now. Grats US!

Well, maybe now Canadian farmers can make back some of the lost revenue (~1b) from the american ban on Canadian beef.

Salis · Post by **Salis** » December 25, 2003, 5:32 pm

Given the previous cases of this developing, I'd have thought most BSE free countries would have adopted massively more stringent stock-feed policies. Obviously this was way beyond profit-spinal-cord-eating-insanity.

Dregor Thule · Post by **Dregor Thule** » December 25, 2003, 6:07 pm

Japan banned the US beef imports, that's pain enough I think seeing how Japan is the #1 importer of US beef. Our beef farmers monetary losses will probably be a drop in the bucket compared to theirs.

Xyun · Post by **Xyun** » December 26, 2003, 1:40 am

mooooo

release the cows!

Raistin · Post by **Raistin** » December 26, 2003, 2:56 am

Obviously this was way beyond profit-spinal-cord-eating-insanity

The spinal cord in the feed is what 95% if not almost total cases, causes cows to catch the disease. Was watching cnn and they had a report showing how it spreads, and what causes it. Its the infected cows, that have their spines and stuff ground up for feed for other cows.

You would think leaving out cow spine in feed would be the easy way of stopping this. Of course we didnt have mad cow disease 50 years ago when they just ate normal feed.So just leaving it out would be too easy....

miir · Post by **miir** » December 26, 2003, 4:10 pm

valryte wrote:God forbid a country bans the import of a food if a case of contamination occurs. It's not like a country has the right to protect it's people and see how widespread it is before they resume importing.

Any country that imposes a 100% ban on American beef is completely justified.

Kylere · Post by **Kylere** » December 26, 2003, 4:18 pm

Hmm perhaps this will aid the US in shifting to healthier eating practices. I personally feel that any and ever country has the right to restrict or prohibit any inport it wants.

I like a good steak occasionally, and a good ground sirloin burger, but the world is not going to come to an end if I have to stick to peanut butter, and a iron supplement.

Wulfran · Post by **Wulfran** » December 26, 2003, 7:41 pm

End result: Canadian Beef prices rise, grats canucks! ..and US beef prices drop due to lots of beef that can't be exported now. Grats US!

Actually Canadian beef prices won't go up much... we had a huge glut from when there was one case of BSE detected in Alberta in May. I'm not positive on the numbers but I would be very surprised if Canada imports more beef from the US than vice versa.

As far as Canada totally banning US beef, while it would have been nice to slap the US hysteria right back in the face, I think the Canadian gov'ts experience is such that they want to take a measured scientific response: 1 cow in millions does not equal an epidemic. The border closures are more sypomatic of protectionist BS than any real danger. Thousands of cattle were slaughtered (and the meat wasted) and many thousands more will be in Western Canada over that case in May, yet no other cases were found, and the one was found before the animal entered the food chain. What that tells me is that the safeguards work. If Japan and other Asian countries want to get caught up in hysterical crap, we should let them eat fish with their rice... and maybe be critical of other trade deals made with them.

I did have to laugh though. There was a discussion on CBC Newsworld (Candadian news channel) with a Canadian and American cattleman. The points of view were startlingly different: the Canadian guy was talking about reacting to what ocurrs in scientificallly supported manner, while the American cattleman was advocating freezing the US borders to all beef imports and exports to protect the US industry... was a little eye opening.

Ramseis · Post by **Ramseis** » December 26, 2003, 11:46 pm

Give me a steak from one of those cows any day. Its not the meat that kills you its the Brain and Spinal cord.

Kguku · Post by **Kguku** » December 27, 2003, 1:20 am

Ramseis wrote:Give me a steak from one of those cows any day. Its not the meat that kills you its the Brain and Spinal cord.

Safe to eat – On the basis of current knowledge, scientists agree that some bovine products are safe, regardless of the BSE status within a given country. Bovine products considered safe to eat or use include milk and milk products, gelatin prepared exclusively from hides and skins, and collagen prepared exclusively from hides and skins. Infectivity has never been detected in skeletal muscle tissues, from which most quality meat is derived. A number of scientists believe that skeletal muscle meat is as safe to consume as milk and milk products, provided that such meat has not been contaminated during slaughterhouse procedures.

Siji · Post by **Siji** » December 27, 2003, 3:40 am

And still people ask me why I'm a vegetarian..

Zamtuk · Post by **Zamtuk** » December 27, 2003, 3:42 am

Winnow · Post by **Winnow** » December 27, 2003, 4:57 am

Vegitarians fart a lot.

Mak · Post by **Mak** » December 27, 2003, 11:59 am

Q: Does cooking protect meat?

A: No. The prions survive radiation, even autoclaving, which is used to sterilize surgical instruments.

That's the scariest part- resilient buggers.

Siji · Post by **Siji** » December 27, 2003, 2:14 pm

Winnow wrote:Vegitarians fart a lot.

And this is a bad thing how?

Ennia · Post by **Ennia** » December 27, 2003, 5:44 pm

they traced the cow's origin to Canada

Lugon · Post by **Lugon** » December 27, 2003, 6:25 pm

ROFL, I love how Kyoucan posts "No they didn't" after someone says they traced the cow to Cananda. I turn on the news and see some Canadian guy admitting it then come back here and see her post is gone. Can we hold Canada liable now?

Arundel Pajo · Post by **Arundel Pajo** » December 27, 2003, 7:51 pm

Well - it was a cow that was brought over from Canada over 2 and a half years ago. That's a pretty wide window, there.

I haven't read the latest, so I'm not saying the cow didn't contract the disease in Canada, but still...

Also worth noting is that it still doesn't absolve the US. The mad cow case in Canada a few months ago was in a cow that had very recently come from the US... This whole thing is a lot messier to explain away than just saying "it's from Canada," which is what the Beef Council and our government wants us to swallow. At best, we still have a Canadian case and a US case of the disease, they've just been flip-flopped. At worst, we have two US cases.

miir · Post by **miir** » December 27, 2003, 8:12 pm

Hillarious.

Canadian records show the alleged cow to be over 6 years old.
American records show the cow to be 4 and a half years old.

It's also probable that the cow had originally come from the US and was owned by a canadian for 4 months.

Can we hold Canada liable now?

Wait for the DNA tests.

Also, is it possible for BSE to lay dormant in cattle for over 2 years?
Should the purchaser not perform some sort of due dilligence in the manner of medical tests to ensure the cattle is free of disease?
How about periodic tests on their livestock to ensure that none of thier cattle have BSE?

It sickens me to see Americans try to shift blame and responsibility on this.
But then again, that seems to be the 'american way' lately.

Krimson Klaw · Post by **Krimson Klaw** » December 27, 2003, 8:58 pm

miir wrote: It sickens me to see Americans try to shift blame and responsibility on this.
But then again, that seems to be the 'american way' lately.

Knock the people trying to blame Canada to save face, not the whole freakin country.

kyoukan · Post by **kyoukan** » December 28, 2003, 8:37 am

First the USDA says they have no way of tracking what cows come from where. Then they come out and say it was definitely from Canada. The cow has been in the united states, according to them, for at least 4.5 years, and it went around the entire time with mad cow and nobody found it? also, the canadian cow that was diagnosed with the disease was definitely a cow from the US.

the reason I deleted my previous post was because I read that the USDA said that they "definitely" traced the cow's origins back to Canada, which is basically impossible to do given the current way the US tracks cattle. The only people that have "definitely" traced it back to Canada are the farmers in the US who are about to have their livelihoods ruined.

It's also interesting that the cow has somehow magically lost two years of it's life in the suddenly pristine and perfectly accurate US record keeping.

It's virtually impossible for a cow to catch BSE in Canada because it's illegal to feed cattle parts of the slaughtered cows back to them, and it's strictly enforced. What a disgusting and barbaric practice forcing these animals to cannibalize in order to sustain themselves. Pretty much the only way a cow is going to contract BSE is by eating diseased cow parts. I can't think of any places that allow such horrific practices in order to save a couple dollars other than the US and the UK.

Neroon · Post by **Neroon** » December 28, 2003, 12:51 pm

kyoukan wrote:It's virtually impossible for a cow to catch BSE in Canada because it's illegal to feed cattle parts of the slaughtered cows back to them, and it's strictly enforced. What a disgusting and barbaric practice forcing these animals to cannibalize in order to sustain themselves. Pretty much the only way a cow is going to contract BSE is by eating diseased cow parts. I can't think of any places that allow such horrific practices in order to save a couple dollars other than the US and the UK.

*sigh*

It's been illegal in the US since 1997. You know, the same time Canada made it illegal. You can still put blood and fat in the feed in the US, though. Oh wait, you can in Canada, too.

Kilmoll the Sexy · Post by **Kilmoll the Sexy** » December 29, 2003, 10:04 am

Ron DeHaven, the U.S. Department of Agriculture's chief of veterinary medicine, said Canadian records show the cow -- a Holstein -- entered the United States via Eastport, Idaho, with a herd of 73 other cows in August 2001.

He said investigators have matched an ear tag applied to the cow at the point of export and removed from the sick cow at the slaughterhouse to records of a Canadian cow.

DeHaven said investigators hope to use DNA tests to confirm their preliminary determination that the cow entered the country from the Canadian province of Alberta.

"The investigation today is focusing on tracing the other 73 animals that presumably came into the United States in the same shipment with this positive cow," DeHaven said.

Mad cow disease, known to scientists as bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), is a brain-wasting disease that is usually transmitted to cows via contaminated feed and has an incubation period in the animals of four to six years.

4 to 6 years is a pretty damn long incubation period. At least this will probably lead to government agencies cracking down hard on people not following the spinal cord feed laws.

Chmee · Post by **Chmee** » December 29, 2003, 3:16 pm

http://www.techcentralstation.com/122903F.html

Interesting article on BSE over at tech station.

BSE is a fatal disease in aged cows, according to the U.S. Dept of Agriculture (USDA) Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS). Its victims are usually 3 to 6 years old -- that's old for cows, as those raised for meat are slaughtered young (under 24 months). BSE is one of several neurological degenerative diseases, like chronic wasting disease, that occur sporadically and spontaneously in wild and domesticated ruminant animals. (Non-ruminant animals such as pigs and poultry don't get the diseases).1 Scrapies, the form endemic in sheep and goats, has been identified in Europe since the mid-18th century.2

Despite news reports quick to place blame, scientific evidence is far from conclusive. Since BSE was first identified in 1986 on an organic farm in England, the cause has not been pinpointed, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

What is known is that BSE is not contagious and cows cannot give it to each other or other animals just by living together. Nor can they give it to people. There's never been a single case. Despite that fact, 4.5 million innocent healthy cows were destroyed in England during the peak of their mad cow hysteria, devastating beef and dairy farms and creating an environmental disaster in disposing of all those dead carcasses. (Who needs terrorists when citizens can destroy their own food system?) With hope, reason will prevail, as it has in Canada since their BSE case last May, and the unnecessary mass slaughter of healthy animals won't be repeated.

If other cows with BSE are discovered in North America, as they likely will, it doesn't mean safeguards have failed or that an epidemic is upon us. Unlike England's despairing bout, the few cases of BSE in Canada, Japan, Spain, Italy and scattered around the globe have remained contained and harmless.

England has had 90% of recorded BSE cases. Scientists believe it may have spread there because of an unusual scenario that's since been corrected, dramatically curtailing the number of cases. Learning from Britain's experience, precautions put in place elsewhere make the likelihood of a similar spread remote.3

Cows with BSE act like animals and people with other spongiform encephalopathies -- they lose muscle control, waste away and die. Creutzfeld-Jacobs Disease (CJD), one of the human spongiform encephalopathies, occurs spontaneously in about 1 in a million people, according to the World Health Organization. It appears to have a genetic component 5 to 10% of the time, with a small percentage iatrogenic. CJD is unrelated to mad cow as evidenced by the fact it occurs in England about the same frequency as the rest of the world, reports the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and APHIS. CJD has been around a long, long time -- long before mad cow ever hit the news, according to Konrad Eugster, MD, executive director of the Texas Veterinary Medical Diagnostic Laboratory at Texas A&M University.

In light of British panic over mad cow, their Spongiform Encephalopathy Advisory Committee has been closely studying and monitoring these diseases since 1990. On March 20, 1996 it noted 10 cases of human CJD that occurred in younger people and lasted longer than typically seen. Besides the fact that most variant-CJD victims had eaten beef at some time -- although no one had eaten brain tissue and one of the ten patients had been a vegetarian since 1991 -- they could find no scientific evidence linking BSE and vCJD.

That didn't stop vCJD from being labeled the human form of mad cow. A popular orthodoxy has evolved, fueled by media frenzy, that meat contaminated with the brain prions of mad cows could give people the disease. "It's all been much ado about nothing," said Scott C. Ratzan, director of the Emerson College/Tufts University School of Medicine Program in Health Communications and editor of the Journal of Health Communications. "Based on available scientific evidence, we can be virtually certain that mad cow disease poses no threat to humans."

While several studies published in Nature reported an association between vCJD and BSE, they are far from conclusive and other researchers question the theory. No one has ever been able to establish that any vCJD victim has ever eaten beef from a diseased animal or that infected prions can cross the species barrier and cause disease in humans. There also aren't increased cases in cultures where brains are a favorite dish. Transmission from other exposures doesn't hold up, either, as there's no higher incidence among farmers, slaughterhouse workers, butchers or others in greater contact with BSE or animal products.

Rather than being some exotic new prion disease Alan Ebringer, a professor of immunology at King's College, London believes vCJD is the result of the body's own immune response to a bacteria called Acinetobacter, making it another autoimmune disease with mechanisms already well-understood by science. George A. Venter, a public health consultant from Hamilton, Scotland, noted in an October issue of the British Medical Journal. that the evidence linking BSE and vCJD is weak. Even when mice with the human prion protein were injected with BSE prions, they didn't get the disease, Venter found. The first case of CJD, diagnosed in the 1920s, was in a 23 year old person, casting doubt that vCJD is a new disease in younger people at all. Clinical features, spread and pathology of vCJD are more similar to Kuru, a disease found in Papua New Guinea, he found. Venter also noted that cases are much rarer than would be expected from a food source.

The whole thing is worth a read.

Bubba Grizz · Post by **Bubba Grizz** » December 30, 2003, 1:58 pm

While I love a nice thick juicy steak as much as the next carnivore I have to think that maybe this is a good thing. What if we lost all the cows. I mean nationwide or worldwide, no more cows for meat.

I once read that it takes an acre of land to feed one cow while on the same acre of land crops could be grown to feed 100 people. It would be a sad thing to be sure and I hope it doesn't happen in my lifetime but I think this would be better for the world as a whole. Feed the starving.

Chmee · Post by **Chmee** » December 30, 2003, 3:21 pm

Bubba Grizz wrote:While I love a nice thick juicy steak as much as the next carnivore I have to think that maybe this is a good thing. What if we lost all the cows. I mean nationwide or worldwide, no more cows for meat.

I once read that it takes an acre of land to feed one cow while on the same acre of land crops could be grown to feed 100 people. It would be a sad thing to be sure and I hope it doesn't happen in my lifetime but I think this would be better for the world as a whole. Feed the starving.

First, chances of us actually stopping raising and consuming cattle because of this is pretty much nil.

Secondly, the ability exists today (without getting rid of cows) to feed everyone in the world. Famine in the 20th century is largely a political problem, not a technical one.

miir · Post by **miir** » January 2, 2004, 8:35 pm

hehe

Lift beef ban, U.S. pleads