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From: TSS ()
Aug 23, 2005 11:28 am US/Eastern Beef Banned Under Mad Cow Rules Is Recalled (AP) WASHINGTON Beef banned under mad cow disease rules was shipped to wholesalers in a half-dozen states and is now being recalled by a Wisconsin beef plant. The 1,856 pounds of beef included meat from a Canadian cow that inspectors in Canada determined was eligible for shipment to the United States. A Canadian audit two weeks later found, however that the cow was too old to be allowed entry to the U.S. “There is a minimal chance, given the age of the animal and the health of the animal, that there was any risk whatsoever” to people, Steven Cohen, spokesman for the Agriculture Department’s Food Safety and Inspection Service, said Monday. The U.S. restricts shipments to younger animals because infection levels from mad cow disease are believed to rise with age. The cutoff is 30 months of age. The Canadian Food Inspection Agency is investigating and has suspended the veterinarian who certified the cow, said Francine Lord, import-export manager for the agency’s animal health division. She said the agency finished its audit last week and notified U.S. officials Thursday. The Agriculture Department said Canadian officials verified the cow’s age on Friday. The cow in question was 31 months old. Two other Canadian cows less than 30 months old were processed with the older cow, and USDA recalled meat from all three animals as a precaution. Green Bay Dressed Beef of Green Bay, Wis., processed the cow on Aug. 4 and distributed the meat to wholesalers in Pennsylvania, Florida, Illinois, Maryland, Minnesota and Wisconsin. The department and the company are trying to find out how much beef wound up in retail stores, Cohen said. The department issued code numbers for recalled cases of beef sent to distributors, but it was unknown whether beef that reached the retail level would have carried the same numbers. Consumer groups have criticized the government for not revealing the names of retail stores involved in food recalls. “When it comes to a case like this, the retailer is never disclosed—how are you ever going to know whether your chuck roast was involved in this recall or not?” asked Jean Halloran, director of food policy initiatives at Consumers Union. “The consumer has absolutely no way of knowing.” The recall is for cuts of meat that could contain backbone because the cow’s backbone was not removed. Those cuts include neck bone, short loin and bone-in chuck. The U.S. requires the removal of backbone and nerve parts— which can carry mad cow disease—when older cows are slaughtered. The at-risk tissues are removed from cows older than 30 months. U.S. and Canadian officials said the cow in question wasn’t the only problem in a shipment of 35 cows from Ontario: Also in that shipment were eight pregnant cows, which the U.S. also prohibits. The cows were processed for distribution but their calves were destroyed, the Agriculture Department said. Those cows are part of the Canadian investigation, Lord said. The U.S. closed its borders to Canadian cattle in May 2003, when Canada discovered its first case of mad cow disease. The government allowed Canadian imports to resume last July after a court battle with a group of western ranchers suing to keep the border closed. Canada subsequently found two more cases of mad cow disease. The U.S. also found two cases, one in a cow that had been imported from Canada. Since the border reopened, 40,390 Canadian cows have crossed the border. Mad cow disease is the common name for a brain-wasting ailment called bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or BSE. In humans, eating meat contaminated with BSE has been linked to about 150 deaths from a rare but fatal degenerative disease called variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. (© 2005 The Associated Press. http://wcbstv.com/health/health_story_235113004.html Greetings, >>>The U.S. requires the removal of backbone and nerve parts— which can carry mad cow disease—when older cows are slaughtered. The at-risk tissues are removed from cows older than 30 months.<<< International Symposium of Prion Diseases held in Sendai, October 31, to Bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) in Japan "Furthermore, current studies into transmission of cases of BSE that are The hardback book title is 'PRIONS' Food and Drug Safety SPRINGER 2005 snip... the youngest age of BSE case to date is 20 months old; As at: 31 May http://www.defra.gov.uk/animalh/bse/index.html snip... snip... The incubation period usually ranges from 2 to 8 years. Following the onset of clinical signs, the animal's condition gradually deteriorates until the animal becomes recumbent, dies, or is destroyed. This usually takes from 2 weeks to 6 months. Most cases in Great Britain have occurred in dairy cows (Friesians) between 3 and 6 years of age (50). The youngest confirmed case occurred in a 20-month-old heifer, and the oldest case was found in a cow 18 years of age. R. RUBENSTEIN, Ph.D., NYS Institute for Basic Research, Staten Island, NY 10314-6399 http://www.vet.uga.edu/vpp/gray_book/FAD/bse.htm http://www.vet.uga.edu/vpp/gray_book/FAD/index.htm We have to be careful that we don't get so set in the way we do things that Dr. Detwiler: That's on the slaughter. But on the clinical cases, aren't Dr. Keller: Tissues are routinely tested, based on which tissue provides an Dr. Detwiler: That's on the slaughter. But on the clinical cases, aren't NO URL... TSS Yoshifumi Iwamaru, Yuka Okubo, Tamako Ikeda, Hiroko Hayashi, Mori- Priori Disease Research Center, National Institute of Animal Health, 3-1-5 Abstract Bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) is a disease of cattle that causes The specified risk materials (SRM) are tissues potentially carrying BSE The 11th BSE case in Japan was detected in fallen stock surveillance. PrPSc was detected in brain, spinal cord, dorsal root ganglia, trigeminal Our results suggest that the currently accepted definitions of SRM in 179 T. Kitamoto (Ed.) Vet Pathol 42:107–108 (2005) Letters to the Editor Editor: Absence of evidence is not always evidence of absence. In the article ‘‘Failure to detect prion protein (PrPres) by immunohistochemistry in striated muscle tissues of animals experimentally inoculated with agents of transmissible spongiform encephalopathy,’’ recently published in Veterinary Pathology (41:78–81, 2004), PrPres was not detected in striated muscle of experimentally infected elk, cattle, sheep, and raccoons by immunohistochemistry (IHC). Negative IHC, however, does not exclude the presence of PrPSc. For example, PrPres was detected in skeletal muscle in 8 of 32 humans with the prion disease, sporadic Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD), using sodium phosphotungstic acid (NaPTA) precipitation and western blot.1 The NaPTA precipitation, described by Wadsworth et al.,3 concentrates the abnormal isoform of the prion, PrPres, from a large tissue homogenate volume before western blotting. This technique has increased the sensitivity of the western blot up to three orders of magnitude and could be included in assays to detect PrPres. Extremely conspicuous deposits of PrPres in muscle were detected by IHC in a recent case report of an individual with inclusion body myositis and CJD.2 Here, PrPres was detected in the muscle by immunoblotting, IHC, and paraf- fin-embedded tissue blot. We would therefore caution that, in addition to IHC, highly sensitive biochemical assays and bioassays of muscle are needed to assess the presence or absence of prions from muscle in experimental and natural TSE cases. Christina Sigurdson, Markus Glatzel, and Adriano Aguzzi Institute of Neuropathology University Hospital of Zurich Zurich, Switzerland References 1 Glatzel M, Abela E, et al: Extraneural pathologic prion protein in sporadic Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. N Engl J Med 349(19):1812–1820, 2003 2 Kovacs GG, Lindeck-Pozza E, et al: Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease and inclusion body myositis: abundant diseaseassociated prion protein in muscle. Ann Neurol 55(1): 121–125, 2004 3 Wadsworth JDF, Joiner S, et al: Tissue distribution of protease resistant prion protein in variant CJD using a highly sensitive immuno-blotting assay. Lancet 358:171–180, 2001 NO URL...TSS Terry S. Singeltary Sr. P.O. Box 42 Bacliff, Texas USA 77518
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