Lets get real. Read the following link and do your own risk analysis. http://techcentralstation.com/122903F.html These conditions in animals have been around for many years and the link of a transfer to humans has never been verified. A question I have asked for some time is. With the hundreds of rendering plants around the world and their many employees working with these potential carriers why haven't they shown any greater evidence of the condition than the general population? Even vegetarians have had the condition.
Here are a couple of links to look at . http://www.organicconsumers.org/madcow/risky122703.cfm http://www.organicconsumers.org/madcow/safeguards122803.cfm remember the disease takes a few years to show. Would you like to take a chance?
tradernut remember the disease takes a few years to show. Would you like to take a chance? ____________________________________________ The sheep form of the disease has been around since the mid 1800's surely it has had time to appear in humans. I am OKAY with one chance in 40 billion or as close to zero as you can get. I however do not trust the media and the socialist activist groups and the odds of them being wrong is about 99 in 100 by me.
Trusting the official figures? 1 in 40 billion? Socialist activist groups? Fact check time? or are you going to call it "wild speculation"? The official figures say that CJD is exceptionally rare --one case in every million people. In the U.S. this would mean there are 250 CJD cases at any given time. Hansen points to two studies in which people diagnosed with Alzheimer's were examined after death. In one study, among 54 presumed Alzheimer's victims, 3 (or 5.5%) were found to actually have CJD.[13] A Yale University study of 46 victims of Alzheimer's found that 6 (or 13%) actually died of CJD, not Alzheimer's.[14] There are 2 million people with Alzheimer's in the U.S.[8] If 5.5% of them actually have CJD, there are 110,000 cases of CJD in the U.S., not 250 cases. If 13% of the 2 million have CJD, then there are 260,000 cases of CJD in the U.S., not 250. If even 1% of the 2 million had CJD, it would mean there was an epidemic of 20,000 cases of CJD masquerading as Alzheimer's. Thus the FDA's argument that CJD is very rare, and not increasing, needs to be re-examined.http://www.monitor.net/rachel/r607.html
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. __________________________________________ Please re-read. vCJD is similar to BSE but not directly related. Probably vCJD is something that is just in humans and appears in a very rare instance. If testing of post alzheimers patients proves that more of them had vCJD instead that does absolutely nothing to establish the link to BSE. Nor has there been any links established to scrapie (around for 150+ years) or the wild deer form. Also chickens and pigs don't get the condition when fed the contaminated byproducts so why just humans?
How about this link? http://www.cultureshop.org/details.php?code=PURDEY The media prints basicly what it is given by the government.
tradenut - I have heard of the theories mentioned in your link and I thank you for that link. I think that that connection may not turn out to be the answer but it is certainly a step in the right direction. This would fit many of the deficiencies in the BSE to human transfer links. If this turns out to be the cause of BSE then there would be no transfer to humans because it is a type of poisoning that alters a protein. So the cause of BSE and vCJD may be the same (organo-phosphates) but not transferring from one to the other directly. This is what I have always felt that they were similar but not linked or transferred. Mainly because the evidence just is not there that this has happened with all of the opportunities in the past. As always there is an incredible amount of politics in all this. The battle here with Canada is really not with Canada as such but the way the big 3 packers have used Canada and the NAFTA to circumvent US monopoly laws.
Wonder if they could just sell the mash to Australians? Afterall, Vegemite is made from the yeast left overs from making beer. Maybe they'd also eat the leftover mash from Whiskey making
doubter- thanks. I do hope that changes will be made. I am for not messing with nature, there is to much of that going on. Lett cows eat grass that is what evolution brought them to do, but I guess greed wont let it happen like that. So far no one is really looking deep into what really causes the disease. Just traing to treat the symptoms. Like looking for where the cow came from, How about looking for how he got the disease? How about looking for where the feed came from in order to (in case it is so spread) keep anymore of these feeds to come out. OH well. I just make sure I eat cows that were raised from pasture and not fed corn or other stuff like that and try to stay as much as possible from artificial stuff (read man made chemicals) ,wont totally protect me from all of that but surely put the ods in my favor.
______________________________________________ You have it pretty right. I will guarantee you they are looking for the feed source where the cow got the condition as well as all the other cattle that came in with this cow. I can also guarantee the Canadians are looking for the feed source and any other possible problems. They need to find the place where the cow came from to try and figure how she contracted the condition. If as your earlier link suggests there is another cause for the condition then that is where the effort should be being placed. With cancer, aids, and all the others affecting so many more people vCJD incidence is so low that nobody is yet screaming for more research. This is what I really believe is the case with BSE, vCJD,CJD, srapie, and wild deer wasting. These are conditions brought on by exposure to something that causes the pion. Not spread from animal to animal or across species. Maybe similar to cancer in not being transmitted. I suspect the exposure to have occurred over some period of time as mainly older animals and humans are affected. One major key to this theory is the wild deer. They were not feed any form of feed that could carry the pions and yet it is epidemic in them in several states and hundred of miles between outbreaks. I haven't been able to come up with a senario where these wild deer would be ingesting enough contaminated other deer brains or spinal columns to cause the epidemic. If it is something they are being exposed to then it must be widely spread. The pour on in the UK isn't used on deer so the exposure could be to the same type of substance but in a different form.