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May 31, Rapid City Journal (SD) — Atypical strain of bovine spongiform encephalopathy found in U.S. cattle. The two cases of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) found in U.S. cattle over the past year came from a rare strain of BSE found largely in Europe that scientists are only beginning to identify, according to research by a French scientist. Researchers in France and Italy who presented their work at an international conference in England reported two rare strains of BSE that are harder to detect and affect mainly older cattle. Thierry Baron of the French Food Safety Agency presented research indicating...

CANADIAN PRESS OTTAWA — Federal officials have confirmed a new case of mad cow disease — the fifth in Canada since screening began three years ago. A six-year-old dairy cow from British Columbia tested positive for bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or BSE, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency said Sunday. The cow from a Fraser Valley farm was identified through the national BSE surveillance program when it began having trouble walking. “That’s how it caught the eye of the farmer and the vet,” food agency spokesman Alain Charette said Sunday. Officials say no part of the animal entered the human food or...

While newly published research confirms that under laboratory circumstances prion-protein can be absorbed across the gut, it also shows that this is unlikely to occur in real life. In addition, the results show that the places in the gut that do take up these disease-associated proteins are different from the locations where infectivity is known to be amplified. The findings will be published in the Journal of Pathology. Since the outbreak of BSE in cattle and vCJD in humans, scientists have struggled to make sense of how an abnormal variation of a normal protein can trigger an infectious disease. Some...

THOUSANDS of people in Britain may be infected with variant CJD, the human equivalent of mad cow disease, without knowing it, research suggests. Experiments have confirmed that it is possible for a much wider group of people than had been assumed to be infected with the incurable brain condition. The presence in the population of undetected carriers of the infection has serious implications for the safety of the blood supply, and it increases the risk of passing on vCJD to others through infected surgical instruments. It could make it much harder to eliminate the human infection, even though cattle no...

HoustonChronicle.com -- http://www.HoustonChronicle.com | Section: Political news March 23, 2006, 2:36PM Meatpacker Sues Feds Over Mad Cow Test By LIBBY QUAID AP Food and Farm Writer © 2006 The Associated Press WASHINGTON — A Kansas meatpacker sued the government on Thursday for refusing to let the company test for mad cow disease in every animal it slaughters. Creekstone Farms Premium Beef says it has Japanese customers who want comprehensive testing. The Agriculture Department threatened criminal prosecution if Creekstone did the tests, according to the company's lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Washington. [snip] It would cost about $20 per animal to...

Moore says mad cow timing odd Saturday, March 25, 2006 KIM CHANDLER News staff writer MONTGOMERY - Republican gubernatorial candidate Roy Moore said Friday it was a "strange coincidence" that mad cow disease was found in Alabama just as government officials want to start an animal-identification system. Moore is opposed to a national tracking system that would give identification numbers to farm animals and to a bill pending in the Alabama Legislature that would authorize Alabama to start its own tracking system. "It's a strange coincidence that we have a case of mad cow disease at the same time the...

WASHINGTON - Investigators may never figure out where the Alabama cow with mad cow disease was born and raised, in part because the U.S. lacks a livestock tracking system the Bush administration promised two years ago. After the first case of mad cow disease in December 2003, the government pledged to get a nationwide program into place quickly so officials could track cows, pigs and chickens from their birth to the dinner table. Today, however, the system is a long way off. Alabama officials saw the need firsthand last week as they tried to discover where the infected cow came...

Alabama Cow Tests Positive for Disease By LIBBY QUAID, AP Food and Farm Writer 4 minutes ago A cow in Alabama has tested positive for mad cow disease, the Agriculture Department confirmed Monday, the third case in the U.S. The animal was a beef cow but hadn't entered the food supply for people or animals, said the department's chief veterinarian, John Clifford. A routine test last week had indicated the presence of the disease. Results were confirmed by more detailed testing at a government laboratory in Ames, Iowa, Clifford said. U.S. investigators have found two previous cases of mad cow...

Fox News Alert of a possible case of mad cow disease in the U.S...

In the midst of a predictable episode of Bush Derangement Syndrome, Barbra Streisand castigates President Bush as "this C student," all the while littering spelling and grammar errors throughout her February 28, 2006 screed... For now you can read the whole error-ridden piece at BabsOnline. Assuming the text is eventually fixed you can see the highlighted errors in a PDF version or a Word version.

The first cases of BSE or "mad cow disease" could have been caused by animal feed contaminated with human remains, says a controversial theory. Some raw materials for fertiliser and feed imported from South Asia in the 60s and 70s contained human bones and soft tissue, the Lancet reports. Bone collectors could have picked up the remains of corpses deposited in the Ganges river to sell for export. If infected with prion diseases, they could have been the source for BSE. But the theory has been greeted with scepticism by several experts on Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE). The authors admit...

PANAMA CITY (Reuters) - Panama's agriculture minister resigned on Tuesday, alleging that a proposed free trade deal with the United States could expose the country to bird flu, foot and mouth disease and mad cow disease. Laurentino Cortizo told President Martin Torrijos he feared Panama could be forced to ignore its own food health standards in a free trade deal with Washington. "It worries me enormously that a relaxing of the sanitary measures could put the health and lives of Panamanians at risk," he said in his resignation letter, a copy of which was seen by Reuters. "Have you analyzed...

Deer and elk that are infected with mad cow-like disease, known as chronic wasting disease (CWD), carry infectious agents called prions in their leg muscles, indicating that those handling and eating infected deer meat may contract the same disease, University of Kentucky researchers reported on Jan. 26 in the journal Science. This newfound evidence is shocking because the public has been informed that the infectious prion protein for CWD was only present in parts of the nervous system such as brains and backbones. It was thought in the past that only nervous tissues from infected deer were susceptible to spreading...

TOKYO Jan 20, 2006 — Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi on Friday said Japan would completely halt imports of U.S. beef after a recent shipment was found that may contain material considered at risk for mad cow disease "This is a pity given that imports had just resumed," Koizumi told reporters. "I received the agriculture minister's report with his recommendation that the imports be halted and I think it is a good idea." Mad cow disease is the common name for bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or BSE, a degenerative nerve disease in cattle that is linked to a rare but fatal nerve...

TOKYO/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Japan halted imports of U.S. beef on Friday just a month after lifting a ban, following the discovery of spinal material in a shipment that should have been removed due to the risk of mad cow disease. U.S. officials immediately launched an investigation and ordered extra training for all American meat inspectors, surprise inspections at plants handling beef exports, and sent a team of experts to examine meat shipments now held in Japanese ports. "This is an unacceptable failure on our part to meet the requirements of our agreement with Japan," Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns told reporters....

3 employees of Creekstone Farms in Arkansas City were airlifted to a Wichita hospital Sunday afternoon after an elevator accident. Arkansas City Fire officials say the 2 men and 1 woman were seriously hurt when a freight elevator suddenly fell about 30 feet. They say Creekstone officials told them the elevator was not intended for human use. Creekstone Farms is declining comment on the incident until Monday.

Despite the outbreaks of foot-and-mouth disease in several Brazilian southern states which prompted over forty countries to temporarily ban beef imports from the world's largest exporter, Brazil will be honoring visiting United States president with a typical South American barbecue. President Bush is scheduled to visit Brazil early next month following the Americas summit in Mar del Plata, Argentina, and President Lula da Silva has already anticipated that the distinguished leader, and Texan, will enjoy a display of “gaucho” culinary barbecue art when in Brasilia. At least fourteen FAM outbreaks have been officially reported in five states, including Sao Paulo,...

Associated Press BOISE, Idaho — From the moment Joan Kingsford first saw her husband stagger in his welding shop, she wanted two things: for him to recover and to know what made him sick. She got neither. Alvin Kingsford, 72, died recently of suspected sporadic Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD), a fatal brain-wasting illness. The disease can be conclusively diagnosed only with an autopsy, which did not take place. State and federal health officials are trying to get to the bottom of nine reported cases of suspected sporadic CJD in Idaho this year. Sporadic, or naturally occurring, CJD differs from so-called variant...

BOISE, Idaho (AP) -- State and federal health officials are trying to get to the bottom of nine reported cases of suspected sporadic Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, a naturally occurring form of the fatal brain-wasting illness. "One thing is very clear in Idaho -- the number seems to be higher than the number reported in previous years," said Dr. Ermias Belay, a CJD specialist with the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). "So far, the investigations have not found any evidence of any exposure that might be common among the cases." Normally, sporadic CJD strikes about one person in a...

British meals ready-to-eat donated for Hurricane Katrina victims as part of an international relief effort have sat on shelves at an air base in Arkansas because of U.S. regulations put in place after a mad cow disease scare. The MREs were shipped to Little Rock Air Force Base in Jacksonville, which has been the hub for all international Katrina aid. The base has received 1,842 tons of goods from dozens of countries since the hurricane hit the Gulf Coast on Aug. 29. U.S. Department of Agriculture regulations prohibit the importation of British beef and poultry. The prohibition was put in...