Sweden's First Case of Mad Cow Confirmed

[tocqueville]

Fri Mar 3, 8:00 AM ET

BRUSSELS, Belgium - Sweden's first case of mad cow disease has been confirmed by the European Union's central laboratory, the EU executive said Friday.

Sweden reported the case last week after tests showed symptoms of the illness in a domestic cow. The tests from a 12-year-old cow in central Sweden were sent to the central EU lab in Weybridge, England, which confirmed the disease, the European Commission said.

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The Swedish Board of Agriculture said the 12-year-old cow had lived its entire life on the same farm, and that officials are investigating what cow feed it had been given. It said the cow is likely to have been given contaminated feed more than 10 years ago, before Sweden introduced security measures to stop the disease, but that the symptoms did not show up until now.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060303/ap_on_re_eu/sweden_mad_cow;_ylt=AuxuaX.qIqwZAde_UT_VEBZWbBAF;_ylu=X3oDMTA5aHJvMDdwBHNlYwN5bmNhdA--
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which shows that recent regulations don't stop the transmission of the disease. Cows that have bben fed with animal protein can develop the disease many many years later... put things into perspective...

[SmokingJacket]

1. I suspect it's in a LOT more places, too... nt

[WinkyDink]

2. Haven't touched beef/veal in years. I hope it's not too late.

[Random_Australian]

5. Hahahahaha 'mad cow doesn't effect me

I eat Aussie beef. It's safe.

[dorkulon]

3. Alternate theory of cause

I read an article in a local rag about a conspiracy theory on what causes mad cow, having to do with organophosphate pesticides and manganese poisoning. The idea is that the chemical industry, who could be found liable if the real cause were discovered, is doing everything it can to squash the truth about this. I found it convincing, but haven't ever seen anything else like it since.

Anyone else heard about this? There was a British farmer who refused to give his cows this pesticide which had been mandated by the UK, and his cows didn't get sick when all others did.

[tocqueville]

4. no proof at all

1) high doses of pesticides can of course induce symptoms like the ones of BSE. But they cannot induce the prion, and even less the prions transmission to humans.

2) you don't feed cows with pesticides. But they can of course ingest pesticides while grazing or more likely when fed with protein rich food like corn/soy grown with pesticides.

3) the events you name don't have to be correlated unless it is a pattern. "Organic cows" won't develop the disease because not fed with animal protein and won't show any similar symptoms because fed with organic -pesticide free food. But it's very difficult to separate the causes from eachother.

4) there are rare cases of "organic cows" developping the disease, which show that the prion (altered protein) is present naturally in the food chain. A very similar disease like scrapie (the mad sheep disease) has always happened naturally. And it's probably because mad sheep corpses have been turned into animal protein complements that the cows have been contaminated.

[dorkulon]

6. Found the article in question...

worth a read...it's not peer-reviewed or anything.

http://buffalobeast.com/40/madcow.html

It's pretty compelling. excerpt:

Unsuccessful in garnering interest or official funding for his research, Purdey set out on a global trip to the brightest hotspots of Spongiform disease to analyze environmental factors. He found common factors at all of these sites: extremely low levels of copper, selenium, and zinc, coupled with abnormally high levels of manganese in the food chain. Manganese is a necessary metal and part of your daily diet, but overexposure is known to damage the nervous system. In fact, “Manganese Madness,” which once afflicted miners of the metal, had symptoms virtually identical to Spongiform disease. Every cluster zone Purdey tested had a specific source of atmospheric manganese (or silver) fallout, be it a volcano, factory, refinery etc. In Colorado, the deer afflicted with CWS were supplied by hunters with mineral licks, containing excessive manganese to strengthen their antlers. In Britain, cows were exposed to absurdly high levels of manganese in yet another feeding atrocity: Chickens, given high doses of manganese to strengthen eggshells, excrete about 98% of it, and their shit is then fed to the cows...

<...>
Brown performed the experiments, introducing manganese into prion-producing cells, and actually produced the all-important lethal prion malformation. American and French follow-up trials revealing the same low-copper high-manganese conditions in the brains of dead CJD victims confirmed the results. Even Kuru, the first Spongiform disease thought to be caused by cannibalism, is found to have coincided with a 1911 volcanic eruption, which showered the Fore region of New Guinea with manganese oxide ash. This also explains why the rest of native New Guineans, also traditional cannibals, didn’t get Kuru, and why no one had developed it before.

As to the pesticide (phosmet), they are poured over the cow's back, not eaten.

And this farmer's cows actually were fed the MBM, cow gook. Apparently in the UK you can feed your cows other cows and still call them "organic," as long as it only makes up a certain percentage of their diet.

And they haven't been able to reproduce the Mad Cow prion in labs by feeding cows scrapie-infested brains, either.

[tocqueville]

7. manganese hypothesis more interesting...

1) the organic cows I named were not British, I think they were French and really organic.

2) manganese causes forms of Parkinson's disease

3) this institute sees a link scrapie/BSE
http://www.iah.bbsrc.ac.uk/schools/factfiles/BSE.htm

http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/madcow/science.html

but I agree that the mystery isn't solved. Anyway the fact that the cows without pesticide/manganese didn't get the disease is not a scientific proof, because so many other factors can be involved. "It's not because a pair of storks hatch on your chimney that your wife get's pregnant while you are away". Could be, but the mailman is a far greater suspect.

[dorkulon]

8. I'm not saying

this is a definite cause, but from the evidence contained in the article, it seems like further research in that direction is warranted. And the fact that they have been shut out makes me suspicious.

It seems like a lot of brain diseases have their root cause in metal poisoning, from Parkinson's to Autism. Manganese, mercury, aluminum... and it's the Chem/Pharm industries that would be held responsible in the end. There are already clear examples of coverups in these industries regarding other such liabilities. So I don't really think it's such a whacky idea that they might do the same thing here, at least withholding funding for research that might expose them.

The upside of this is that BSE is probably not transmissible by eating, but something that humans get from environmental conditions also. This would explain how life-long vegetarians have contracted the disease.