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

geoschmo · #1 October 9th, 2003, 04:05 PM

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 · #2 October 9th, 2003, 06:22 PM

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 · #3 October 9th, 2003, 06:42 PM

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 · #4 October 9th, 2003, 07:26 PM

Quote:

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 · #5 October 9th, 2003, 08:29 PM

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 · #6 October 9th, 2003, 09:32 PM

Quote:

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.

Erax · #7 October 9th, 2003, 09:46 PM

Actually, a few years back Canada pulled a 'Japan' on Brazil. They stopped importing Brazilian meat (which was no big deal, but then the US stopped too, which really hurt us) on the grounds that our herds were infected. It turns out that we had in fact had some cases of BSE, but they were limited to livestock imported from the UK just before the outbreak there. This UK livestock was slaughtered and disposed of and never hit the market. Animal protein has never been added to animal feed in Brazil. Canada sent a group of experts/inspectors over to check our herds before they resumed their imports.

When the whole story was over, there was a lot of suspicion in the air about the real, political motives for this.

Renegade, I wonder if your press ran this story over there at the time. Down here it was a major brouhaha. We even had a boycott on Canadian artists in the radio.