Yes. And those officials aren't saying that to protect the US beef industry.:rolleyes:

When you only test less than a hundredth of one percent of the animals, you can't credibly say anything about the safety of the US bovine population.

How crazy is it that they are finding any infected cows? I mean, when you test as little as they do, you would expect them to find nothing. But they keep popping up! How many more cases are out there that they never find?

I understand the justation period in humans is 10 - 15 YEARS.
I guess we'll know more then. Then again if the Mayans are right there is nothing to worry about.

I'm sorry. Really. I am.

Justation? Is that like when someone has a baby with Justin Bieber?

You edited your post, so I'll respond to it. I believe every word of this. Can't argue with it at all. It's true. But notice that you said "most" and not "all." Dairy cows are typically slaughtered at much older ages, and they are often turned into hamburger and fed to people. And while it's true that the animals that they test are mostly old and sick, just because an animal is old or sick doesn't mean it gets tested. They don't do enough testing for that to happen. And while sick downer cows don't enter the human food supply, old dairy cows that can still stand up often enter the human food supply.

Nirvana, I'm what you would call a customer. I love beef. And I'm telling you that I don't eat beef any more because there are too many loopholes for BSE to make it into the human food supply. I was pleased that the rules changed in 1997 to make things safer, and odds are that any beef I eat will be just fine. But there is no guarantee. This newly discovered cow is proof that a BSE contaminated cow can still make it into the human food supply. If this dairy cow wasn't quite so far gone that it was a downer cow, it would have been slaughtered and ground into hamburger. Fortunately that didn't happen. The farmer didn't decide to send it off to the rendering facility until after it got sick. But if he decided just a month earlier, when symptoms hadn't shown up yet, then that cow would be in somebody's stomach.

It's been 15 years since the laws changed, and BSE shouldn't be showing up any more. I really want to know how old that most recent cow was. If it was 16 years old, then everything is cool. But if it was 3 years old, then we have a problem, and we need to identify how it got infected so it won't happen again.

Glatt you really should read the articles you post. The cow was affected with ATYPICAL BSE a form that occurs spontaneously in cows and human beings but is not the type that can be infectious to animals or humans. It is not a zoonose.

"The USDA tests about 40,000 cows a year."

This cow was not a downer cow it was DEAD.
On any given day a dairy has three or four carcasses of cows that may have died from old age. Rendering companies, commonly known as "fat and bone collection," pick them up for processing into commercial products such as makeup, chicken feed and pet food.

If you are wanting to test every food animal that goes to slaughter be prepared to pay $500lb for meat. Maybe that is worth it to feel safe from a disease that occurs in about one out of every one million people world wide every year. In the USA fewer than five deaths per billion per year. Autism deserves more consideration.


the sky is not falling ...

Huh. There it is, in paragraph 12. I admit I didn't see that. I'm not familiar with spontaneously occurring BSE. I'd like to know more about that. If BSE can just appear out of nowhere, then that is a risk that can't be minimized.

I saw that and ignored it. It's a meaningless number without also providing the total number of animals slaughtered each year, especially older animals. It's worse than a meaningless number. It's cheesy marketing. It sounds like a big number and is there simply to try to sway the unthinking reader into assuming the testing is rigorous and that most beef is tested. It is not. it was probably provided by the beef industry.

same difference. The point being that both downer cows and dead cows don't go into the human food supply. But before they reach that state, they do.

You lose credibility when you make shit up. A two minute Google search shows a BSE test is going to cost $30-$50 per animal. When you divide that by the few hundred pounds of meat you get from each animal, you wind up with an increased cost of 10 cents to 50 cents per pound, depending on the size of the animal.

It was hyperbole I was not making shit up.

I did not make up the number of people in this country affected with BSE every year. Fewer than five deaths per billion per year You might as well be afraid of the boogey man.

BTW the test does not administer itself> with the government being involved they will probably have to pay 10 people for each test.You know one to hold the cow while one cuts off the head while one collects the blood etc...

Snicker. I'ma gonna save that one.

This thread makes me want MOAR BEEF. Not.

:cowsmilie:

I gotta admit, I'm really jonesin for a nice juicy grilled steak.

Bwahahahahahaaaaaaaaaa :blush:
FTR - gestation period

And going to take time, which would throttle the supply. It would be wonderful, like the war on drugs.