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From: TSS (216-119-144-54.ipset24.wt.net)
Subject: Guess who's playing mad-cow roulette?
Date: January 10, 2005 at 3:58 pm PST

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Guess who's playing mad-cow roulette?
Date: Mon, 10 Jan 2005 16:08:48 -0600
From: "Terry S. Singeltary Sr."
Reply-To: Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy
To: BSE-L@LISTSERV.KALIV.UNI-KARLSRUHE.DE

##################### Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy #####################

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Guess who's playing mad-cow roulette?
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Posted: January 10, 2005
1:00 a.m. Eastern

© 2005 WorldNetDaily.com

The government and the media pulled another fast one. I'm talking about
Mad Cow Disease.

While we're diverted by the tsunami, the Democrat election challenge,
the attack on Alberto Gonzales and efforts to be nicer to terrorists,
the American food supply is threatened and may well be seriously
compromised.

The horror is that no one is paying attention, and those who have, have
bought into the official line: "Everything is OK, we're taking care of it."

I'm from the government and I'm here to help you. Right.

According to the United States Department of Agriculture last Monday,
Americans don't have to worry about eating Canadian beef, because, we're
told in all seriousness, the food safety rules of both countries
"provide the utmost protections."

Why did we need that reassurance? Because on Sunday, Jan. 2, Canada
confirmed its second case of mad cow disease – Bovine Spongiform
Encephalopathy.

Uh Oh.

No one in the USDA, the Commerce Department or the Bush administration
wanted to hear that because just four days before that, on Dec. 29, the
USDA announced that our border will reopen to Canadian beef on March 7.
It means we can again import Canadian beef products and cattle younger
than 30 months old.

That decision is based on World Health Organization guidelines. Hmmm.

Our border has been closed to such imports since May 2003, when the
first case of Canadian Mad Cow Disease was reported. Political battles
have raged since then, to get rid of the ban. There's a lot at stake.
Seventy percent of Canadian beef is exported to the United States –
that's more than $1.5 billion annually.

The news of the January Mad Cow case hit our media and was reported, as
were the reassurances of the government agencies charged with protecting
not only the integrity of the U.S. food supply, the health of American
consumers, but also the safety of the American beef industry.

Were they worried? Nah. They assured us all is OK. The media repeated it
– press releases are great. Oh, and by the way, the administration also
said it will stand by its decision to reopen the border.

Why? Because it has confidence consumers and the industry are protected
in both countries.

Funny, about that. Just days before, the Vancouver Sun (that's a
Canadian newspaper, folks) revealed it had obtained internal documents
from the Canadian Food Inspection Agency. The documents show the
Canadian government, early in 2004, conducted secret tests on cattle
feed to see whether rules prohibiting animal tissue from being used in
cattle feed were being followed.

The results are shocking. More than half the feed contained animals
parts not listed on the label. Of 70 feed samples labeled "vegetable
only," 59 percent contained "undeclared animal materials."

Canadian manufactured feed was the worst. Seventy-one percent of the
samples had undeclared animal protein in them. Of imported samples, just
under half did. There are about 550 commercial feed mills in Canada,
CFIA found several hundred of those mills violated federal regulations.
They don't even know what kind of animals the protein came from!

Michael McBane, the national coordinator for the Canadian Health
Coalition, says "It demonstrates the fact that the feed ban is basically
meaningless."

Attention, USDA: You missed something.

Sergio Tolusso, CFIA feed program coordinator says compliance is
critical in preventing the spread of BSE, but admits they have no idea
of how much feed contains animal remains.

President Bush and the USDA: Meet Sergio Tolusso and Michael McBane.

This isn't food-nut, scare tactics. BSE is a fatal cattle disease, found
also in sheep, goats, swine, poultry and game. It attacks the nervous
system, eating holes in the brain and killing the animal.

People who eat infected meat can contract the human form of BSE, called
Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. It eats away the brain, reduces the person to
senility and kills. Since first identified in England in 1986, there
have been more than 180,000 cases. But it can't be diagnosed until an
autopsy is done and it takes years to develop. The danger is easy to
ignore.

BSE originates with a protein called a prion that exists in the brain,
spinal cord and other nervous system tissue. It's virtually
indestructible. It can't be killed by any means we know, surviving all
known decontamination methods including the highest temperatures.

BSE is totally preventable. Stop feeding animals to animals. It's done
by feedlots to save money – slaughterhouse scraps extend animal feed.
Unscrupulous feed companies play the game. It all comes down to money.

It's appalling that our government is willing to play Mad Cow roulette
with our health.

It's no comfort for the government to say we can feel safe eating
Canadian beef. There's no way to know. Every effort to label food
products with the country of origin has been beaten back by
internationalists and proponents of open border-world trade, who care
only about profits and nothing about public health. The American cattle
ranchers have been fighting for such labeling only to be ridiculed in
Washington and ignored in the media. It's disgusting.

The government is wrong to resume trade with Canada and the U.S. media
have shown – again – they are only interested in reprinting or reporting
the official line. They'd rather scare us with global-warming stories
based on speculation than tell us the truth about a potentially deadly
situation.

For our media to miss (or ignore) a story of this magnitude just across
our border is shameful. I've followed the story of feed contamination
for months and it happens in this country, too. It's been covered
regularly by a little weekly newspaper out of Montana called "Agri-News,
The Best in the West." Editor Linda Grosskopf has the guts to tell it
like it is. That's what media used to do.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Barbara Simpson , "The Babe in the
Bunker" as she's known to her KSFO 560 radio
talk-show audience in San Francisco, has a 20-year radio, television and
newspaper career in the Bay Area and Los Angeles.

http://worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=42308

TSS

######### https://listserv.kaliv.uni-karlsruhe.de/warc/bse-l.html ##########

EFSA Scientific Report on the Assessment of the Geographical BSE-Risk (GBR) of the United States of America (USA) Publication date: 20 August 2004 Adopted July 2004 (Question N° EFSA-Q-2003-083) * 167 kB Report * 105 kB Summary Summary of the Scientific Report The European Food Safety Authority and its Scientific Expert Working Group on the Assessment of the Geographical Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE) Risk (GBR) were asked by the European Commission (EC) to provide an up-to-date scientific report on the GBR in the United States of America, i.e. the likelihood of the presence of one or more cattle being infected with BSE, pre-clinically as well as clinically, in USA. This scientific report addresses the GBR of USA as assessed in 2004 based on data covering the period 1980-2003. The BSE agent was probably imported into USA and could have reached domestic cattle in the middle of the eighties. These cattle imported in the mid eighties could have been rendered in the late eighties and therefore led to an internal challenge in the early nineties. It is possible that imported meat and bone meal (MBM) into the USA reached domestic cattle and leads to an internal challenge in the early nineties. A processing risk developed in the late 80s/early 90s when cattle imports from BSE risk countries were slaughtered or died and were processed (partly) into feed, together with some imports of MBM. This risk continued to exist, and grew significantly in the mid 90s when domestic cattle, infected by imported MBM, reached processing. Given the low stability of the system, the risk increased over the years with continued imports of cattle and MBM from BSE risk countries. EFSA concludes that the current GBR level of USA is III, i.e. it is likely but not confirmed that domestic cattle are (clinically or pre-clinically) infected with the BSE-agent. As long as there are no significant changes in rendering or feeding, the stability remains extremely/very unstable. Thus, the probability of cattle to be (pre-clinically or clinically) infected with the BSE-agent persistently increases.

http://www.efsa.eu.int/science/efsa_scientific_reports/gbr_assessments/573_en.html

ONE YEAR PREVIOUSLY ;

From: Terry S. Singeltary Sr. [flounder@wt.net] Sent: Tuesday, July 29, 2003 1:03 PM

To: fdadockets@oc.fda.gov Cc: ggraber@cvm.fda.gov; Linda.Grassie@fda.gov; BSE-L

Subject: Docket No. 2003N-0312 Animal Feed Safety System [TSS SUBMISSION TO DOCKET 2003N-0312]

Greetings FDA,

snip...

PLUS, if the USA continues to flagrantly ignore the _documented_ science to date about the known TSEs in the USA (let alone the undocumented TSEs in cattle), it is my opinion, every other Country that is dealing with BSE/TSE should boycott the USA and demand that the SSC reclassify the USA BSE GBR II risk assessment to BSE/TSE GBR III 'IMMEDIATELY'. for the SSC to _flounder_ any longer on this issue, should also be regarded with great suspicion as well. NOT to leave out the OIE and it's terribly flawed system of disease surveillance. the OIE should make a move on CWD in the USA, and make a risk assessment on this as a threat to human health. the OIE should also change the mathematical formula for testing of disease. this (in my opinion and others) is terribly flawed as well. to think that a sample survey of 400 or so cattle in a population of 100 million, to think this will find anything, especially after seeing how many TSE tests it took Italy and other Countries to find 1 case of BSE (1 million rapid TSE test in less than 2 years, to find 102 BSE cases), should be proof enough to make drastic changes of this system. the OIE criteria for BSE Country classification and it's interpretation is very problematic. a text that is suppose to give guidelines, but is not understandable, cannot be considered satisfactory. the OIE told me 2 years ago that they were concerned with CWD, but said any changes might take years. well, two years have come and gone, and no change in relations with CWD as a human health risk. if we wait for politics and science to finally make this connection, we very well may die before any decisions or changes are made. this is not acceptable. we must take the politics and the industry out of any final decisions of the Scientific community. this has been the problem from day one with this environmental man made death sentence. some of you may think i am exaggerating, but you only have to see it once, you only have to watch a loved one die from this one time, and you will never forget, OR forgive...yes, i am still very angry... but the transmission studies DO NOT lie, only the politicians and the industry do... and they are still lying to this day...TSS

http://www.fda.gov/ohrms/dockets/dockets/03n0312/03N-0312_emc-000001.txt

Terry S. Singeltary Sr. P.O. BOX 42 Bacliff, TEXAS USA

• [TSS SUBMISSION TO DOCKET 2003N-0312]

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