Battle against mad cow disease being won: FAO
Thu Mar 23, 8:27 AM ETReuters
Except...
ROME (Reuters) - Cases of mad cow disease have halved each year wordlwide over the past three years, showing farmers were beating the deadly malady, the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization said on Thursday.
"Amid the current international alarm over avian flu, it is good news that the battle against another worrying disease is being won," the FAO said in a statement that gave the latest statistics on animal and human deaths from mad cow.
"In 2005, just 474 animals died of BSE around the world, compared with 878 in 2004 and 1,646 in 2003, and against a peak of several tens of thousands in 1992," it said, quoting data gathered by the World Animal Health Organization (OIE).
Five humans died in 2005 from variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease, believed to be the human form of mad cow disease, or bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), all of them in Britain. In 2004 nine deaths were reported, down from 18 in 2003...
...But the Rome-based food agency said that while the world's attention was on bird flu, governments should not think the battle against BSE was fully over.
"It is quite clear that BSE is declining and that the measures introduced to stop the disease are effective. But further success depends on our continuing to apply those measures worldwide," said FAO animal production expert Andrew Speedy.
The FAO is pushing countries to adopt a tracking system that allows animals to be identified from birth to consumption, a system in place in the European Union but which has yet to be fully implemented elsewhere.
Successful Cell Engineering May Lead To Mad Cow Prevention, Say Researchers
Public release date: 22-Mar-2006Contact: Keith Randallkr@univrel.tamu.edu 979-845-4644Texas A&M University
Successful Cell Engineering May Lead To Mad Cow Prevention, Say Researchers
Researchers at Texas A&M University have successfully "knocked down" the expression of possible disease-causing genes in a cloned goat fetus, perhaps paving the way for breeding disease resistance in other animals, even those genes that might cause bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), commonly known as Mad Cow Disease.
Researchers Mark Westhusin and Charles Long in Texas A&M's College of Veterinary Medicine & Biomedical Sciences, working with fellow scientists Greg Hannon, Michael Golding and Michelle Carmell at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute's Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, successfully utilized genetic engineering to produce a goat cell line in which the gene encoding for prion protein (PrP) was targeted for silencing by a process known as RNA interference. They then utilized these cells for nuclear transfer to produce a cloned, transgenic goat fetus which exhibited a greater than 90 percent knock down of PrP. Previous studies involving mice in which the PrP gene has been silenced have demonstrated the animals to be resistant to prion-mediated diseases such as BSE.
Their work is published in the current Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Their success raises the possibility of introducing the same technology into cattle to prevent numerous diseases. "The exciting part is that we may be able to use this technology to prevent other diseases from ever starting," Westhusin explains.
"We were able to knock down the genes that are involved with diseases in goats. In cattle, the disease that would most likely be targeted would be BSE, although there are numerous other genes that could be targeted to produce animals resistant to a variety of diseases. Moreover, the success raises possibilities to develop similar disease resistance strategies in other animal species," Westhusin adds.
BSE, or Mad Cow Disease, is a fatal brain-wasting disease first identified in the United Kingdom in 1986. BSE affects a cow's nervous system and causes the animal to lose much of its movement before it eventually dies.
More than 180,000 cases of BSE have been confirmed worldwide, including recent cases in the United States. The disease can be passed to humans, and more than 100 such cases have been confirmed, most of those in England.
"The next step is to try and avoid the cloning process - to skip that step if possible in developing the disease resistant animals," Westhusin says. "That's where more research is going to be needed and where the process goes from here..."
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The team's project was funded by the National Institutes of Health and the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Contact: Mark Westhusin at (979) 845-5885 or (979) 777-5472 or email at mwesthusin@cvm.tamu.edu or Keith Randall at (979) 845-4644 or email at kr@univrel.tamu.edu.
S. Korea Expected To Accept USDA Assurances On BSE Cow
21 March 2006
Excerpt...
WASHINGTON (Dow Jones)--South Korea is certain to accept U.S. assurances that the latest case of mad-cow disease in the U.S. isn't a result of weak cattle-feed safety measures, U.S. Department of Agriculture officials said Tuesday.
The USDA, responding to concerns laid out by South Korea, has sent a report with photographs to Seoul, detailing dental exams of an Alabama cow that tested positive for mad-cow disease, or bovine spongiform encephalopathy, last week.
South Korea was in the final stages of a process to resume beef imports from the U.S. when the USDA reported finding the third U.S. BSE case on an Alabama farm...
...It's very clear the animal was over 10 years old, said the official, who spoke on terms of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of trade talks between the U.S. and South Korea. That would mean the cow was born and possibly infected before the U.S. cattle feed safety rules were implemented in 1997.
If the animal was young enough to have been born after U.S. cattle feed safety rules were in place, that could cast doubt on the effectiveness of a key U.S. safeguard against the spread of BSE.
South Korea banned U.S. beef in December 2003 after the USDA announced finding the first BSE case in the U.S. Before the ban, the U.S. exported $815 million worth of beef to South Korea in 2003, according to USDA data.
A South Korean delegation was scheduled to arrive in the U.S. this week to inspect the safety of beef-packing plants - part of the country's process to resume trade, but that has been delayed in order for South Korea to scrutinize new information on the age of the BSE-infected cow, U.S. government and beef industry officials said.
Source: Bill Tomson; Dow Jones Newswires; 202-646-0088; bill.tomson@dowjones.com
U.S. Defends Inspection Systems For Beef Exports to Japan
Excerpt...
(Japan Economic Newswire Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) March 20, 2006
TOKYO, March 20 (Kyodo) -- The United States has defended its inspection systems for beef exports to Japan and isolated an inspection problem found in January as unique, the Japanese government said Monday.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture made the defense in its written response to Japanese questions about the incident in January, in which Japan found an ineligible product in a shipment of U.S. beef.
The incident led to Japan suspending beef imports from the United States since then.
"(The) USDA is very confident that this detection of ineligible product in a single veal shipment does not indicate weakness in the overall U.S. beef processing, inspection or export systems," the department said in the written response the Japanese government made available.
"Moreover, based upon the findings of the investigation, (the) USDA has incorporated additional protections into the U.S. system to avoid repetition of this incident," it said.
Japan lifted its two-year-old ban on U.S. beef imports in December on condition of a U.S. export verification program requiring beef shipments to Japan to come from 20-month-old or younger cattle and exclude backbones and other risk materials to dispel mad cow disease concerns...
...The USDA response said the inspectors involved in the January shipment were "well-trained on all certifications related to food safety issues, but were not sufficiently aware of the EV program." EV program refers to export verification.
The U.S. government reportedly plans to dispatch experts to Japan as early as this week to give explanations about the USDA response and request that Japan soon resume imports of U.S. beef.
tmcnet.com
Don't Limit Choice in Meat Packaging
Don't limit choice in meat packaging:
FDA should only heed evidence of risk
Rocky Mountain News: Editorial
March 16, 2006
Excerpt...
Who's afraid of a little carbon monoxide? Consumer groups and a food-additive maker fretting over its bottom line, that's who - and their complaints could have steak lovers seeing red.
There's no credible link between injecting trace levels of carbon monoxide into beef and fish packages and health threats to the meat-eating public. Without that evidence, federal regulators should let the practice move forward.
Food packagers have used other gases - oxygen, carbon dioxide and nitrogen, for example - in "modified atmospheric processing" to preserve (and make safer) salads, coffee, pasta, bottled water and fish for decades. Carbon monoxide (CO) enhancement poses no unique dangers.
And yet Kalsec, a Michigan-based additive maker, and the Consumer Federation of America want the Food and Drug Administration to ban CO enhancement, saying the agency hasn't subjected the process to proper testing.
The FDA approved CO as an enhancer in 2004. Injecting CO allows "case-ready" fresh steaks and roasts to be packaged at the slaughterhouse rather than the supermarket. The markets can then hire fewer on-site butchers to keep the coolers stocked, which could restrain prices.
In a sealed package, CO-enhanced beef can maintain its reddish hue even if it's been left on a counter for days and not refrigerated...
...The thing is, much like spoiled milk, rancid meat stinks - and CO enhancement does not eradicate the odor. No less important, all fresh meat and fish continue to list expiration dates and proper handling instructions, including warnings about inadequate refrigeration. Consumers who follow the labels should be fine.
It turns out that Kalsec licenses a process to use gas modification (namely, oxygen) to preserve meats. So why the company's protest? Because last year, Kalsec's biggest customer - Tyson Foods - started preserving its meats with a CO-based system. After losing its contract with Tyson, Kalsec asked Washington to put its competitors out of business.
So-called consumer activists aren't credible critics, either, since many object even to recent life-saving technological advances in food processing such as irradiation.
Wider choices and greater selection aid consumers. No one will have to buy meat in a CO package because some consumers won't want to and retailers will heed their desires. But banning harmless technologies is no way to serve consumers, either.
Mad Cow Not Enough to Make Me Mad
By Jason Cannon
Tuesday, March 14, 2006 10:47 PM CST
The Clanton Advertiser
Excerpt...
I'll admit it. I don't fully understand what mad cow disease is. All I really know is that once they find it in a cow, you'll hear about it for the next few weeks and expert after expert will tell you what a horrible disease it is.
Even though state agriculture and health officials Friday stressed that the infected cow posed no threat to humans or other animals, that won't stop the country's herbivores from lashing out against the practice of eating cows.
The animal was used for breeding and hadn't entered the food supply for people or animals, said Dr. Tony Frazier, state veterinarian. That means the possibility of someone eating this cow and its "diseased" meat is absolutely zero.
He added it's unclear how many offspring the cow produced and said the disease would not be transferred from mother to calf. Therefore, any calves that made it to the food chain were not likely to have the disease.
Mad cow is not a contagious disease. Rather, it spreads in cattle through feed containing meat and bone meal derived from infected cattle.
The U.S. prohibited the use of such protein supplement in cattle feed in 1997, so it's likely that the cow was infected before the ban.
Now that stricter guidelines have been put into place regarding cattle feed, with each passing day the likelihood of new mad cow cases decreases. Available data suggest that the animal was probably more than 10 years old, which indicates that it may have been born before 1997, when the USDA implemented a ban on ruminant-to-ruminant feed practices...
...Because of the way beef is processed - without brain and nervous tissue - mad cow infected beef making it to the market place is even more unlikely. The guidelines for cattle feed are just added precautions.
I have absolutely no intentions of altering my diet due to this case of mad cow. In fact, now that the weather is beginning to warm up, it makes it even more likely that I'll fire up the grill - and beef is my prime choice of grilling fodder.
Note: Jason Cannon is the managing editor for The Clanton Advertiser. His column appears each Tuesday.
No Beef in Meat Packaging Controversy
Monday, March 06, 2006
By Steven Milloy
FoxNews.com Excerpt...Yet another potential food scare is being manufactured out of thin air --- or rather out of carbon monoxide.
Last November, with little fanfare, Michigan-based Kalsec, Inc. petitioned the Food and Drug Administration to ban the use of carbon monoxide-based processes in meat packaging. Kalsec, the maker of a rival meat packaging technology, claims that the use of carbon monoxide in meat packaging is unsafe and could lead to the consumption of spoiled meat that appears safe upon visual inspection.
Kalsec’s petition exploded into a major media frenzy last week after the Washington Post reported (Feb. 20) that meat packagers have “quietly begun to spike meat packages with carbon monoxide in order to give meat a bright pink color that lasts weeks.”
The industry’s motivation, according to the Post, is to save “much of the $1 billion it says it loses annually from having to discount or discard meat that is reasonably fresh and perfectly safe, but no longer pretty.”
Politicians, especially those from Kalsec’s home state, and anti-meat activists have joined in the fray calling on the FDA to ban the use of the carbon monoxide-based packaging process.
Not unlike sliced apples, the color of red meat can change rapidly. The meat starts out purplish in color. Immediately after slicing and exposure to air, it turns red. Continued exposure to air can turn it brown and even grayish – all the while remaining perfectly safe to eat.
But consumers tend to prefer beef that appears red in color. So the industry developed what are known as “modified atmosphere packaging” (MAP) technologies which replace the air in meat packaging with various combinations of gases that retard the discoloration process.
MAP technologies don’t “add” color to meat. They don’t modify bacterial growth and don’t mask spoilage. They simply form a more stable color and avoid premature browning of meat due to oxygenation.
There are no reports of consumers inadvertently eating spoiled meat that had been MAP-treated and becoming sick. This is not surprising since all carbon monoxide-packaged meats display use-by dates. While it’s possible that packaged meat may spoil before the use-by-date if not stored at the proper temperature, consumers would be alerted to such spoilage by bulging packaging, or a strong odor and slimy texture...
...The Food and Drug Administration first approved a carbon monoxide-based MAP technology in February 2002. Meat packagers and processors have since increasingly begun using the technology, displacing previously used high-oxygen MAP systems, such as those sold by Kalsec.
“It is a calculated move to discredit a competing technology,” said the American meat Institute’s J. Patrick Boyle in a press release. “Carbon monoxide-based systems stand to make obsolete Kalsec’s product. That’s what this entire petition and accompanying media campaign are all about,” added Boyle.
What appears to have driven Kalsec to the desperation of petitioning the FDA to have carbon monoxide-based MAP declared unsafe is the FDA’s approval on Sept. 29, 2005 of an application by Tyson Foods – a Kalsec customer – to have its carbon monoxide-based MAP process be given the GRAS or “generally recognized as safe” designation by FDA.
Activist groups are helping to whip up the frenzy about carbon monoxide-packaged meat simply because it dovetails nicely with their long-standing agendas. Long-time beef scare-mongering groups like Safe Tables Our Priority (STOP) and the Consumer Federation of America (CFA) are joining in the fray, attempting to position the controversy as a “consumer’s right-to-know” issue – or at least that’s what STOP told the Washington Post. But STOP’s sincerity can be rightly questioned since, rather than calling for labeling, it joined the CFA and Kalsec in January in asking the FDA for an outright ban on carbon monoxide-based MAP.
No doubt fundraising is tougher these days for groups like STOP that rely on outbreaks of food-borne illness to garner media attention – 2005 was a non-event food poisoning-wise.
“One of the major topics conspicuous by its absence in 2005 was news coverage dealing with food safety issues. There were no major outbreaks of food-borne illness,” reported the International Food Information Council. Moreover, the prevalence of food pathogens in meat, like E. coli 0157:H7, listeria monocytogenes, salmonella are steadily declining, according to data from the American Meat Institute.
It’s too bad we can’t say the same for junk science-based scaremongering.
Steven Milloy publishes JunkScience .com and CSRWatch .com. He is a junk science expert, an advocate of free enterprise and an adjunct scholar at the Competitive Enterprise Institute.
