WASHINGTON (Reuters) - DNA test results show the first U.S. animal infected with mad cow was born in Canada, U.S. and Canadian officials said on Tuesday, a link that could allow the United States to still claim to be free of the brain-wasting ailment.
You bastards!
We run nice, clean mega farms down here! We don't want no stinking Mad Canadacows!
And the Canadian cow that that the disease was born in the US. What's your point? At least our sick cow didn't live out the majority of it's life in Canada. It's pretty obvious where the mad cow originated both times. And if your farmers would stop breaking your own laws about feeding cattle the parts of other cows then maybe you wouldn't have such a problem.
It's not just the cannibalism, feedlots in general are a very nasty way to raise cattle.
"There is at least as much need to curb the cruel greed and arrogance of part of the world of capital, to curb the cruel greed and violence of part of the world of labor, as to check a cruel and unhealthy militarism in international relationships." -Theodore Roosevelt
Yeah, pretty shitty of us to parse semantics like we're doing with respect to this cow's origin and contraction of the disease.
That Canadian cow came from the states and lived in the states for a long time, but it was their problem. Our cow may or may not have originated in Canada, came here as fast as it could, may or may not have spent a disputed amount of time back in Canada, came back here, and it's also their problem.
The really fascinating thing (and I need to Google to see if I can find the original article that I saw and more like it) is that, apparently, scientists are wondering if we've had BSE in the states for years already and just not known it/not wanted to look for it.
In humans, the disease manifests itself (like the cattle) in the central nervous system. The condition it causes is virtually indistinguishable from a rare neurodegenerative disorder called Creutzfedlt-Jakob's Disease, and is considered a variant of it.
Now, CJD in humans is usually a rare genetic disorder, exhibiting autosomal dominant inheritance from the parents. There is also an even rarer transmissable variant of CJD that can be transmitted through blood. Typically, this variant only affects senior citizens, for some reason, and it is quite rare.
In the past 10-15 years, apparently, the US has seen a statistically significant increase in cases of non-genetic CJD - many cases in people younger than the typical profile would suggest. For some reason, we have more of these cases than most other countries, and the WHO has been keeping an eye on CJD in the US for further developments. (It is worth noting, however, that the condition is still quite rare - with an incidence on the order of about 350 cases for the entire US population in a given year...so don't panic.)
Now the only other known variant of CJD is the form contracted from eating cattle who have BSE (a relatively recent discovery, all things considered). Having no cause for alarm in the past, autopsies were never really performed on victims of CJD. Such autopsies are really the only way that scientists can determine if a case of CJD was contracted from eating contaminated beef.
This lack of autopsy data, coupled with our domestic livestock feeding practices and the rise in non-genetic CJD has given scientists pause lately to consider whether or not some of those CJD cases were the result of "mad cow disease."
edit> spelling
Hawking - 80 Necromancer, AOC Mannannan server, TELoE
Also currently enjoying Left 4 Dead on XBL.
If I remember my history correctly, that was during the bubonic plague. They catapaulted plague'd bodies over the walls into enemy cities during seige's
