Mad Cow Disease (BSE)

[Suzanne]

MAD COW LOOPHOLE?

Scott Norton was browsing through herbal supplements when he spotted bottles containing not just plants but some unexpected animal parts: brains, testicles, tracheas and glands from cows and other animals.

The Maryland physician sounded an alarm: How can Americans be sure those supplements, some imported from Europe, are made of tissue free from mad cow disease?

Norton's complaint has government scientists scrambling to investigate a possible hole in the nation's safety net against mad cow disease and it cousin that destroys human brains.  --Riverside, Calif. Press-Enterprise, Feb. 2, 2001.

[Liane H]

This morning I was watching the Washington Journel on C-Span regarding a one hour program regarding Mad Cow Disease. Just find C-Spand and it has this program on the main page.  

36 Million cows are slaughtered every year, but only a 1000 cows are checked a month for the mad cow disease here in America. When the cow is slaughtered, the brain is sent to a lab for testing for the mad cow disease. Whereas in other countries they check 10,000 cows a month. Our test takes two days, whereas the test in Europe only takes two hours. We can only guess if the rest of the cow gets lost while waiting for the results.  
He said the reason we may not know that there could or could not be mad cow disease in this country is that it takes 10 years or more for the disease to manifest itself. Since the cows have a short life span, we have no way of knowing until we start to see the affects in people and by then it will be to late to do anything. You cannot test this as you can for HIV in 6 months. It only appears on the surface just before you get the disease and all the ramifications from it.

From the phone calls on both sides, this is having an effect on the hearers. What should we be doing???

The Pastor at my church is greatly alarmed by all of this and we are making headway in getting a program started regarding the health message and all connecting issues. We should have it going by the end of March. We are now putting all the people, paperwork and programs together. I am very excited.

Dr. Dugald any help you can be to me, please feel free to write or call.  Laurie has sent me the first set of the Abundant Living videos for us to show at church.

I never dreamed from that day last March, 2000 when I found out about my diabetes to this day how God was working in my life for this moment, but now I see it.

Liane

PS: The Mad-Cow program was an interview with Michael Hansen from the Consumer's Union and can be located at:

http://www.consumersunion.org

[This message has been edited by liane (edited 02-11-2001).]

[Suzanne]

Scientists Urging More Mad-Cow Test

Ottawa--Canadians may be at risk of contracting the human form of mad-cow disease from domestic beef because current testing is inadequate, scientists say.

Neither the United States nor Canada do large-scale testing that is needed to detect diseases such as mad cow, said Michael Hansen, a biologist with the U.S. Consumers Union.

David Westaway of the Centre for Research on Neurodegenerative Diseases at the Univ. of Toronto said while 20,000 animals are being tested weekly in France, Canada only tests about 900 animals a year.  -Riverside, Calif. Press-Enterprise, Feb. 18, 2001.

[This message has been edited by Suzanne Sutton (edited 02-20-2001).]

[WendyForsyth]

Wow! Scary stuff eh? Glad I don't touch that stuff anymore. I couldn't after all that I've learned in the last few months. Ewww!

Wendy
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Maranatha!!!

[Curt]

YIKES !!!  

David Westaway of the Centre for Research on Neurodegenerative Diseases at the Univ. of Toronto said while 20,000 animals are being tested weekly in France, Canada only tests about 900 animals a year. -Riverside, Calif. Press-Enterprise, Feb. 18, 2001

Maybe we all should petition our local Conference Health Ministry Directors to find out what information is being sent out to the churches to create awareness.

France tests 20,000 animals a week or 1,040,000 a year while Canada tests 900 a year. This is equivalent to no testing at all.

It takes two days after the animal is killed to get the lab results back if the sample is sent immediately.
Think about what happens in the two days to the animal, how far along the production line it may have gotten, etc. etc. Any item contaminated by the tainted meat has to be destroyed also. My Pastor's sister in law died of Mad Cow disease last year. The Government took the body, there was no funeral. All the surgical implements were taken away and destroyed.

Wow.

[Richard Myers]

While Seventh-day Adventists who are walking in the light will be protected, how about those who have never read the Spirit of Prophecy? Do we have a responsibility to share with them the truth? If we do not warn the world, will we be responsible for the many deaths resulting from eating animal products?

Richard

[Suzanne]

Hidden Dangers of 'Mad Cow' Dis. Continue to Surface

People showing no symptoms of illness can transmit Creuzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD), the human form of mad cow disease, through blood. Now doctors in Britain fear that an 11-month-old baby, whose mother died of CJD, contracted the disease while in the womb. The child has brain damage and suffers from convulsions, but confirmation of the disease can only be made from a post mortem examination if she dies.

Both the nonhuman and human forms of the disease are believed to come from abnormal proteins called prions rather than from conventional organisms.

Although scientists are still trying to determine how the protein functions in a healthy brain, they agree it continues to be spread by contaminated surgical (original CJD) and by eating tissues from infected cows (new variant, or vCJD). Dozens of people in Britain have died from this brain-wasting disease since the first vCJD outbreak in 1986. Scientists believe some cases take as long as 30 years to reveal symptoms, which may have serious consequences in the U.K. and around the world.  --Reprinted from Good Medicine, Spring 2001, Physicians committee for Responsible Medicine.

[Suzanne]

TEEN BELIEVED TO DIE OF MAD COW DISEASE

FRANCE--A French teenager believed to have been suffering from the human variant of mad cow disease has died after slowly losing the ability to walk, speak and breathe.

Arnaud Eboli, 19, died this past week, according to the Assn. of Victims of Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease. His death marks France's third fatality from this malady, which is linked to the consumption of tainted beef. In Britain, where mad cow disease was identified in 1995, ninety people have died of the disease.

Eboli's family was one of 2 French families that filed a lawsuit in November charging that French, British and European Union authorities did not act quickly enough to wipe out mad cow disease.  --Riverside, Calif. Press-Enterprise, April 27, 2001.

[Dugald T Lewis MD]

Someone shared with me a video of recent 3ABN interview with Howard Lyman over the mad cow issue. It was very good. I was very pleased at his references to Sister White warnings about meat.

DTL

[WendyForsyth]

German ostriches may have mad cow disease

Ostriches are thought to be dying of mad cow disease in Germany.

The birds have developed BSE type symptoms after being fed animal bonemeal, which is blamed for causing the disease in cows.

German newspaper Die Zeit reports that the symptoms were seen in ostriches in various zoos.

http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_284800.html?menu=news.latestheadlines

[Suzanne]

HONGKONG CONFIRMS HUMAN MAD-COW CASE

Hongkong's first victim of variant Cruetzfeldt-Jakob Disease(vCJD), the human form of mad-cow disease has been identified as a 34 year old woman. A statement from the Prince of Wales hosopital confirmed that the patient had fulfilled all clinical diagnostic criteria for the disease.

The unnamed patient was said to be local but had lived in Britain from 1985 to 1992 and from 1997 to early this year.

The difference between variant CJD and classic CJD is characterized by vCJD's earlier psychiatric symptoms and striking younger people. Of the 18 cases of classic CJD in Hongkong since 1996, 16 have died.  --adapted from a Rueters New Item.

ss

[Suzanne]

MAD COW CASE FOUND IN ROUTINE TESTING

GREECE--This country confirmed its first case of mad cow disease July 2, 2001 at a slaughterhouse in a northern town. The disease was detected in a cow at the slaughterhouse in Sidirokastro. The bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or BSE, was found during routine testing implemented on Jan. 1, 2001. --adapted from the Riverside, Calif. Press-Enterprise, July 3, 2001.

[Curt]

Thurday evening, returning from a trip I was passing through the immigration section of the airport to collect my luggage. There were personnel handing EVERY passenger a handout on CJD and Foot & Mouth disease. As I received my copy and walked on I saw a 6 foot high standing poster on the same topic. Nothing is said about Mad Cow Disease though.

Shouldn't we be seeing such warnings in our offices and churches where there is Pot Luck lunch served with meat?  

It is high time that warnings be sent out on ALL fronts.

[Suzanne]

'MAD COW' CASE CONFIRMED IN JAPAN

A major beef scare has swept Japan after British scientists confrimed a case of mad cow disease in a Tokyo suburb, the first case outside Europe.

Beef prices in the area have plummeted by 20 percent and meat packing firms have started identifying beef as imported from Australia and the U.S. Many countries, including the U.S. and several Asian nations have imposed bans on beef imported from Japan. --Los Angeles Times, Sept. 23, 2001, and the Riverside Calif. Press-Enterprise, Sept. 26, 2001.

[This message has been edited by Suzanne Sutton (edited 09-27-2001).]

[Suzanne]

SUSPECTED MAD COW MADE INTO FEED

TOKYO (AP) -A nationwide probe for mad cow disease following the discovery of what turned out to be Asia's first case revealed that the suspect animal was not destroyed as previously announced, but processed into meat and bone meal, a government spokesman said.

Agriculture Ministry spokesman Toshimichi Kado said an investigation revealed that a meal plant and a feed mill in 2 different Japanese states were in possession of tons of meal that included processed meat and bones from the 5-year old Holstein milk cow who it was discovered had mad cow disease.

Earlier government reports said the animal had been slaughtered and burned. Kado said a misunderstanding between ministry officials and local authorities had resulted in the erroneous announcement.

The suspect cow, from a farm just east of Tokyo, was slaughtered in August after mysteriously losing its ability to stand. Its meat and bones were sent to be processed into meal before the results of a test for mad cow disease was known, Kyodo News agency said.  --adapted from an Associated Press article dated Sept. 14, 2001.

[This message has been edited by Suzanne Sutton (edited 09-27-2001).]

[Curt]

TODAY IN HEALTH HISTORY
=======================

A New Class Of Germs

Biologist Stanley Prusiner performed groundbreaking research on a
new class of germ that slowly attacks the brain.  Prusiner, who
was born on this date in 1942, began researching prions in 1972
after one of his patients died of dementia resulting from the
human equivalent of "mad cow" disease.  Years later, he and his
research team at the University of California at San Francisco
discovered a new class of infectious agents-which they called
"prions"-that are aberrant proteins.  Certain prions, under
unusual circumstances, make their way into brain cells.  If the
proteins that make up the prion take over the cell machinery,
they can cause nerve cell destruction and disease.  Originally
met with skepticism, Prusiner's research won him the Nobel Prize
in physiology or medicine in 1997 for his discovery of "a new
biological principle of infection."

Copyright InteliHealth, Inc., 2002.  All rights reserved.

[Suzanne]

Los Angeles Times, May 31, 2002

MAD COW SCARE INSPIRES BLOOD DONOR LIMITS

WASHINGTON--New U.S. limits on blood donations from certain folk who have spent time in Europe take effect today to protect against mad cow disease, and blood banks say they could face shortages.

The restrictions from the Food and Drug Administration are a precaution meant to keep the blood supply safe from the disease.

As of today, people will be banned from donating blood in the U.S. if they have lived in France for 5 years or more from 1980 to the present or have visited or lived in Britain for a total of 3 months or more from 1980 to 1996.

In addition those who received a blood transfusion in Britain from 1980 to the present, and current or former military personnel and their dependents who spent 6 months or more on military bases in northern Europe from 1980 to 1990 or in southern Europe from 1980 to 1996, will also be barred from donating blood.

Experts beleive people contract the human form of mad cow disease, known as variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease, by eating infected meat. More than 100 people, most of them in Britain, have developed the brain-wasting illness.

America's Blood Centers, which collects about half of the blood in the U.S., said it may lose more than 300,000 donations after the new blood donor rules take effect.

"In order to assure that blood will be available when it's needed, regular donors need to give blood more often, and new donors must replace those lost from the deferrals," Jeanne Datriotis, president of America's Blood Centers, said in a statement. --adapted.

Suzanne

[Suzanne]

MAD COW DISEASE FOUND IN ISRAEL

Israel confirmed its first case of "mad cow" disease, found in the Golan Heights, but officials said they were confident no infected meat had reached the market.

The Agriculture Ministry said it will examine the brains of all cattle over 30 months old that are sent to slaughterhouses before releasing their meat to the market. The offspring of the infected cow and 3 others in the herd will be destroyed, the ministry said.

Officials said the Israeli-born animal was probably infected by poultry fish meal imported from Europe. A biopsy showed bovine spongiform encephalopathy, commonly known as mad cow disease.  --Los Angeles Times, June 5, 2002.

More:

MAD COW DISCOVERED IN AUSTRIA

Considered a country at very low risk for mad cow disease--because it has imported cattle feed from the U.S. since WWII--Austria discovered its first case of mad cow disease in December 2001. European Union experts had previously concluded that both Austria and the U.S. have low risk of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE, or mad cow disease) in their herds. Unlike the U.S., however, Austria has a rigorous BSE testing program instituted in Januaary of 2001, which uses the lastest rapid-testing techniques and makes it possible to take large test samples.

The finding of this disease in Austria leaves Sweden as the only country within the European Union without a reported case of BSE, after Finland also reported its first case of the brain-wasting scourge in December 2001. --EarthSave Magazine, Fall/Winter 2001.

[This message has been edited by Suzanne Sutton (edited 06-07-2002).]

[Laurie Mosher]

   Mad-Cow Disease showed up in a patient in the Mid-west of Canada a couple of months ago. The news headlines said "the FIRST known case in Canada!"

  Really!! I xrayed a patient in my hometown who died from Mad-Cow disease. This patient was diagnosed at the famous Mayo Clinic. And that happened 10 years ago!!

[Richard Myers]

The seventh Czech case of mad cow disease has surfaced last Monday at a farm in northeast Bohemia. 800 cows are to be slaughtered.  It will take weeks, maybe even months. "No one is prepared or has the technology to liquidate such a number of animals. We cannot even imagine where we will liquidate such a huge quantity of animals."
The first BSE case was discovered in June 2001. The first two cases of BSE were discovered in June 2001 in Dusejov, and in August 2001 in Svetnov. Both towns are in south Moravia. Another two cases appeared in the fall of 2002 in Deblin, south Moravia, and in Sestajovice near Prague. The fifth case was found this year in May in Dolni Lazany, south Moravia.