Destruction of cattle, first to stop mad cow disease and then to stop foot-and-mouth disease, dominated news stories from Great Britain for nearly three years.
Bovine spongiform encephalopathy, dubbed "mad cow disease" by the British public, is a deadly neurological disease that may affect humans.
BSE is one variety of a rare group of diseases called transmissible spongiform encephalopathies (TSEs).
In the United Kingdom, people that work in close contact with animals or animal feeds have no higher incidence of vCJD than the general public.
Scientists believe cattle contract BSE when they eat feed that contains protein from infected animals.

bse-facts

My letter of Sept. 12 regarding false statements about mad cow disease made by the Ontario Cattlemen's Association prompted a response from its big brother, the Canadian Cattlemen's Association (CCA).
Specifically, throughout the 1990s, Canada imported potentially contaminated feed materials from countries with mad cow disease.
Federal law still permits cattle to be fed materials from other rendered cattle, and pigs and chickens, fed on rendered cattle material, are allowed to be rendered and fed back to cattle.
In her letter, McCreath expressed concern that I might be pushing for more food inspectors.
Worse yet, Statistics Canada documentation shows that more than 2.8 million kilograms of this potentially contaminated animal feed material was imported after 1996 -- after it was established that humans could contract new variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD) from eating infected cattle.

issue-22-part-15

http://reports.eea.eu.int/environmental_issue_report_2001_22/en/issue-22-part-15.pdf
Many of the UK policy-makers who were directly responsible for taking policy decisions on bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) prior to March 1996 claim that, at the time, their approach exemplified the application of an ultra precautionary approach and of rigorous science-based policy-making.
The pathological characteristics of the new cattle disease closely resembled scrapie, a transmissible spongiform encephalopathy (TSE) that is endemic in the UK sheep population.
Another major change occurred when MAFF announced, on the very same day, that they would be introducing a ban on the use of potentially contaminated ruminant protein in ruminant feed.
One unfortunate consequence of that decision was that for the next six or so years crosscontamination occurred between feed destined for cattle and feed destined for other animals, greatly prolonging the BSE epidemic.

MadCow

It is commonly thought that BSE was spread by feeding processed remains of sick animals to healthy animals that contracted the disease from the feed.
The animal parts that are believed to have contained the diseased material are the Specified Risk Materials (SRMs).
What follows in section 5 is a description of rendering and feed production that provides the background for the analysis in section 6.
Swine feeds are blended to be nutritionally the same for each product, although protein sources vary widely for the same ration depending on input costs.
Implications of the other policy changes are discussed and the impact on costs of the extreme cases are given below.

36-005-0702

http://usachppm.apgea.army.mil/documents/FACT/36-005-0702.pdf
The following information will help you to become familiar with food safety issues pertaining to "Mad Cow Disease" or Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE).
It is important to know that the US has banned the import of European beef and US military dining facilities, commissaries, exchange facilities (BX/PX/NEX) and MWR worldwide have been directed to sell only beef and beef products purchased from US approved sources.
1. U.S. Army Center for Health Promotion and Preventive Medicine Website.
WHAT IS MY RISK OF EXPOSURE TO BSE?
Public health control measures have been recommended by the World Health Organization to prevent BSE-infected meat from entering the human food chain.

madcow

The recent increase in reported cases of BSE in European cows and the increasing number of human nvCJD cases in the United Kingdom have raised fears throughout the European Union (EU) of the risk of eating beef possibly contaminated with the BSE agent.
BSE has infected more than 180,000 cattle in the UK and about 1,800 cattle elsewhere in the EU, according to the European Commission's Health and Consumer Protection Directorate, an agency of the EU.
Because of UK actions to eradicate BSE since it was first identified in 1986, the number of BSE cases is falling sharply in that country, but it is rising in a number of other European countries.

pv_madcow

http://www.pcrm.org/health/PDFs/pv_madcow.pdf
Evidence suggests that the agent that causes BSE has already spread to at least some animals in the U.S. Between 1979 and 1990, 2,614 Americans died of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, and the possibility that BSE played a role in some of those deaths cannot be ruled out.
It has been found in native cattle in France, Switzerland, Northern Ireland, the Republic of Ireland, the Channel Isles, and the Isle of Man.
According to the Department of Agriculture, 499 cattle were imported from the U.K. between 1981 and 1989.
U.S. Mink fed offal from cattle have developed a disease, called transmissible mink encephalopathy (TME), which is remarkably like BSE.

ferguson

January 10, 2002--- Although a great deal of uncertainty exists about whether bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), also known as mad cow disease, can be transmitted from cattle to sheep, researchers have developed a mathematical model to assess the health risks of humans contracting BSE from sheep.
Howard Hughes Medical Institute international research scholar Neil M. Ferguson and colleagues at the Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine in London published the model and discussed their interpretation of the initial results in an online article in the January 10, 2002, Nature.
"Rather, we were commissioned to develop a risk assessment of the potential consequences should infectivity of the sheep flock exist."

march01web

It is a multidisciplinary problem, raising questions about the biology of infectious disease, regulation versus deregulation in relation to animal food safety, the spread of illness in the contemporary, boundaryless world, and the ethics of risk communication in relation to hazards to public health.
Australia has introduced several measures in response to the BSE outbreak, including the formation of an NHMRC Expert Committee on transmissable spongiform encephalopathies.
Branch of PHAA, with James Cook and other universities are organising an intensive workshop on practical and theoretical aspects of research design for public health professionals.
With Fran McFadzen moving across to the Health Promotion SIG (congratulations Fran on your new convenor role!!) 2001 has brought some new contenders to the Injury SIG Executive.

PetFoodBse

feeds, disease, BSE, animals, ruminants, proteins, vCJD, cow, pet food, spread, humans, spongiform encephalopathy.
In the mid 1980's cows in Great Britain started exhibiting signs of a scrapie like disease.
In 1986 it was decided that this was a separate TSE and was named Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE) and obtained the nickname of Mad Cow Disease.
It is believed that BSE entered these other countries through importation of live animals with the disease or feed ingredients containing the infective agent.
What caused the first animal to contract BSE is subject to debate.
In the United Kingdom, people that work in close contact with animals or animal feeds have not been reported to have a higher incidence of vCJD than the general public.

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