BSE/vCJD - do you worry?

[Ronda93]

Hello from the American heartland.

Well, cattle futures are diving again today and McDonald's stock is sinking as financial markets react to the BSE discovery in Oregon. I'm sure people are looking at their hamburgers differently, too.

Having been through a time when BSE was widespread and vCJD was actually occuring in the human population, do you worry? Is it a real fear or does it just play on your worst fear?

I'd read some about vCJD in the late 90's. With approx 150 cases surely there's been extensive epidemiological studies of those victims, does anyone have a link to summaries of that reasearch?

Finally, how are cattle prices? Can someone compare the beef market from the low to now?

I'm going to be visiting friends and family who are close to the cattle market and I would like to be the voice of calm and reason... I hope I can.

thanks,
Ronda

 

[WDWfan uk]

Hi Ronda

I'm not sure I can answer many of your questions - you may need to do some searching on the web for some of your answers.

Your sitiuation may be very different from ours - once they have traced the origin of the infected cow - the heritage and movements of that animal and how and when that animal became infected, you will be in a better position to know how serious the problem is.

I believe there was a solitary case in Canada about six months ago but this did not lead to a major crisis - although I think they do not allow beef to travel from Canada to USA?

Ours was initially caused by infected meat from South America illegally imported and fed to stock which then, due to the free movement of stock around the country and different abattoirs, spread the disease widely.

When we were in the depth of the crisis, I think many of us gave up eating beef. In fact, the supermarket shelves were cleared for a while. Whilst it affected comparatively few people, it is the nature of the disease that is very scary, and so dreadful for the victims and their families.

It was an awful time for the farmers - cattle destroyed in huge numbers, areas completely quarantined. It seemed to take forever for them to isolate and destroy, but it seems a long time ago now.

At first people like Macdonalds imported beef, and then the supermarkets re-introduced beef which was young and whose origin had been thoroughly checked.

I do hope you don't have a major crisis on your hands. I would think that if your friends and family were in an area at any risk, those cattle markets would be sealed off to visitors.

 

[rob@rar.org.uk]

Shirley, I think you are getting a little confused with the Foot & Mouth outbreak a couple of years ago. It was F&M that led to whole farms being quarantined to prevent the spread of the disease. I can't recall BSE having this effect because it can only be transmitted by eating infected material (and perhaps cow-to-calf via milk). The origin of BSE is still uncertain, but I remember that a mutation of an exisiting spongiform encephalitis disease seemed to be a favourite candidate. It was the import of infected meat that led to the major F&M outbreak, which started on a Northumberland pig farm.

The BSE-vCJD link took a long time to be accepted (how many of us can remember Agriculture Minister John Gummer force-feeding his daughter a beefburger on TV?) and only slowly did 'panic' set in. It eventually led to a major decline in beef consumtation, before a drastic programme of culling of the older beef herd restored public confidence. In theory there should be no more cases of BSE in the UK because feedstock procedures have changed and potentially infected material (brain, spinal cord, etc) is removed from the carcass before anything happens to it. Despite this, 154 cases of confirmed BSE were reported this year. A number of countries continue to ban the import of UK beef, including the USA.

Regards

Rob

 

[Olaf]

Doesn't it take a long time for this particular disease to manifest itself? Years even? I imagine it's going to take a long time to ensure that the herds are completely free of this.

It's being said that the cow from the States was imported from Alberta, Canada. They're doing DNA to verify that info. They're also looking for all of the other cows from that original herd.

I hope this is going to be a wake up call for the USDA to get their house in order. We'll just have to wait and see.