OT: BSE (aka Mad Cow Disease) in the US

[DavidG]

Originally posted by Mephisto:

quote:

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Which is the problem. I'd like to know how Japan justifies how it is screwing our cattle insustry.

Well, the European cattle industry wants to know the exact same thing from the US and Canada. The north american states did the exact same thing when they were "BSE-free" to protect their market.

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Well no doubt there is a ton of politics involved but wasn't the European problem several orders of magnitude greater than a single case in Canada?

[geoschmo]

This is an uneducated comment here, because I am by no means an expert. But I thought I read somewhere that the reason for feeding animal protein to animals has more to do with the cost of disposing of it by any other acceptable means then it has to do with the cost of animal protein relative to vegatable protein. Processing of animals into meat results in a lot of waste byproducts afterall. You can't exactly dump it down the drain.

[jimbob]

If you've got a big enough blender you can

Of course it's all politics! I haven't heard a peep about the recent (confirm please) case of BSE in Japan. Certainly we have closed our borders to BSE ravaged countries, but those were ravaged while Canada had a single case. "Irrelevant" says the international community, "any BSE = blockades as experienced by the worst case (i.e. the Europe outbreak)"

[Mephisto]

Yea, this IS full of politics indeed.
Britain had the most cases and IIRC the order of magnitude was something about several hundred confirmed cases.
Other countries like France or Germany had less (round about 100 per country IIRC) cases and many of them turned out to be something different.
It's the old story: if you look hard enough you will always find something. I'm sure there is more then one case of BSE in Canada but its not that much hyped as it was in Europe. People here refused to eat beef meat at all and drastic regulations were enforced so that the market wouldn't totally collapse. As usual - with some distance to it - most people are right back now to their "meat level" like nothing ever happened.
Am I afraid of BSE? Well, I think it is a wise thing to test the meat and have a look that only occasionally some undetected BSE meat will reach me, minimizing the risk. Further I think cattle (that is no herbivore at all) should be feed with remains of other animals.

[DavidG]

Originally posted by Mephisto:
I'm sure there is more then one case of BSE in Canada but its not that much hyped as it was in Europe.

If your suggesting that there is more than one case of BSE in Canada becuase it hasn't been detected or someone is covering up then you may be right. But it sounds like your suggesting that there have been other public cases in Canada but the media has not reported them due to lack of interest. I can assure you that is not the case. It is a huge deal here.

Due the the high level of integration between the US and Canadian industry a US ban hurts Canada quite a bit.

[Mephisto]

I should have been more clearly. I suggested that there is more than one case of BSE in Canada that just hasn't been detected.

[TerranC]

Originally posted by Mephisto:
I should have been more clearly. I suggested that there is more than one case of BSE in Canada that just hasn't been detected.

There isn't.