Foot-and-mouth disease in humans:400 known cases
Canada's secret campaign on imported sheep
CWD in wild mule deer in Saskatchewan: hunting industry faces devastation
Twenty-one Texas cattle to be killed and tested for mad cow disease
BSE cases by year of birth
US officials: feed mills still breaking mad cow rules
Vermont: did the sheep really have a TSE?
Can scrapie cause old-fashioned CJD?
Pet food makers making few changes
Did mad cow precautions spread foot-and-mouth
Vox populi
Wed, 4 Apr 2001 review of medical literature by Michael Greger, MDFoot and mouth disease is a zoonosis (meaning that it is disease of animals that may be transmitted to man under natural conditions). (1) Of this, there is no doubt. (2) Probable cases go back over 300 years. There are some 400 reports of alleged foot and mouth disease in human beings across several continents. (3)
Those at highest risk are young children -- found to develop clinical infection more readily than adults--and those in certain occupational groups such as veterinarians, farm workers and their families, butchers, lab workers and livestock auctioneers. The presence of minor breaks in the skin, such as dermatitis, or "Even manicure procedures may cause sufficient abrasion to facilitate infection." (4)
There are several ways people can contract the virus. These include the handling of animals and inhalation of airborne viral particles, but probably the most frequent routes of infection has been ingestion.
Historically, for example, multiple outbreaks among schoolchildren were attributed to unpasteurized milk. High titers of virus are shed into cow's milk--as many as thousands of human infectious doses per drop. While the virus does not survive pasteurization, there have been cases of human infection attributed to cheese and other dairy products (5) which are often made from raw unpasteurized milk. (6)
Most strains of foot and mouth disease virus are susceptible to acidic environments, however, so acidified products such as yogurt are "probably safe." (7)
Human infections are usually, but not always, of a mild nature. (8) After an incubation period of 2-4 days, sufferers start experiencing symptoms such as fever, headaches, shivering and thirst. Later, itchiness, pharyngitis, tonsillitis and, rarely, gastro-enteritis precede the appearance of crops of painful blisters on the sufferer's hands and between their toes. (9)
In the case of the man who contracted foot and mouth disease during the last outbreak in Britain, the blisters on the palms of hands were up to almost an inch in diameter. (10)
Blisters can also form on the lips and inside the mouth, causing extensive ulceration and marked discomfort. Desquamation (skin peeling) of the palms and soles of feet is also known to occur.
In one case it was described that the "Skin of [the] soles peeled off like sandals, in one piece." (11) Recovery is usually complete within 2 weeks, although there was one case reported of someone developing a serious heart infection. Reports of deaths, however, have not been verified. (12)
Human volunteers experimentally infected with foot and mouth disease virus were found to be able to pass the virus along by coughing, sneezing, talking and breathing. (13) It is unknown whether the virus is excreted in human urine or feces. (14)
Although it must be concluded that the transfer of the foot and mouth disease virus between animals and man occurs more frequently than was suspected in the past, clinical disease occurs infrequently considering the extent of human exposure. (15)
Under-reporting is assumed, since the disease may be so mild that sufferers might not seek medical attention (16) and systemic searches for the disease haven't been advised out of fear that "They would create misunderstandings, and possibly even panic..." (17)
(1) Prempeh H, Smith R and B Müller. "Foot and mouth disease: the human consequences." British Medical Journal 10 March 2001:565-6. (2) Bauer K. "Foot-and-Mouth Disease as Zoonosis." Archives of Virology Supplemental 13(1997):95-7. (3) Hyslop NSG. "Transmission of the Virus of Foot and Mouth Disease Between Animals and Man." Bulletin of the World Health Organization 49(1973):577-85. (4) Ibid. (5) Ibid. (6) McDowell, RM and MD McElvaine. "Long-Term Sequelae To Foodborne Disease." Office of Risk Assessment and Animal and Plant Health inspection Cost-Benefit Analysis. United States Department of Agriculture,1997. (7) Hyslop NSG. "Transmission of the Virus of Foot and Mouth Disease Between Animals and Man." Bulletin of the World Health Organization 49(1973):577-85. (8) Hyslop NSG. "The Epizootiology and Epidemiology of Foot and Mouth Disease." Advances in Veterinary Science and Comparative Medicine 14(1970):261. (9) Hyslop NSG. "Transmission of the Virus of Foot and Mouth Disease Between Animals and Man." Bulletin of the World Health Organization 49(1973):577-85. (11) Dlugosz H. "Foot and Mouth Disease in Man." British Medical Journal 27 January 1967:251-2. (12) Hyslop NSG. "Transmission of the Virus of Foot and Mouth Disease Between Animals and Man." Bulletin of the World Health Organization 49(1973):577-85. (13) Sellers RF, Donaldson AI and KAJ Herniman. "Inhalation, Persistence and Dispersal of Foot and Mouth Disease Virus by Man." Journal of Hygeine 68(1970):565-73. (14) Smyth DH. "Foot and Mouth Disease in Man." British Medical Journal 2 December 1967:503. (15) Hyslop NSG. "Transmission of the Virus of Foot and Mouth Disease Between Animals and Man." Bulletin of the World Health Organization 49(1973):577-85. (16) Dlugosz H. "Foot and Mouth Disease in Man." British Medical Journal 27 January 1967:251-2. (17) "Foot and Mouth Disease in Man." Lancet 6 May 1967:994.
Monday March 26 By Richard Woodman Reuters HealthAlthough rare, foot-and-mouth disease can infect humans, according to an old copy of the British Medical Journal that records how a 35-year-old man caught foot-and-mouth disease in 1966. The journal report was dug out of the archives on Monday as the current animal epidemic continued to spread remorselessly across the countryside. [Armstrong R et al. Foot-and-mouth disease in man. BMJ 1967; 4: 529-530 -- webmaster]
The disease afflicts cloven-hoofed animals such as sheep, pigs and cows, causing sores and severe weight loss. In general, the disease poses no risk to humans. Britain now has more than 650 confirmed outbreaks of foot-and-mouth and the virus has spread to France, the Netherlands and Ireland. No cases of human infection have been reported, but the BMJ case shows the possibility cannot be ruled out. The report says the patient became ill in July 1966--six days after an outbreak of foot-and-mouth developed on the farm where he lived with his brother in Northumberland.
The man --now known to have been Mr. Bobby Brewis -- watched but took no part in the slaughter of the farm's animals on 24 July 1966. However one of the affected animals was a cow that supplied milk used in the farmhouse.
"On 28th July he complained of a sore throat, which became worse on the 29th. On the 30th he had a temperature of 99 F (37.2 C), an inflamed throat, and a few blisters on the palms and dorsa of both hands.
"On 31st July his temperature was normal but the blisters on his hands had increased in number. There were two further blisters between his toes and five or six wheals on the side and front of his tongue.
"The patient described his lesions as uncomfortable and tingling, while the tongue was hot, tingling and sore." The blisters disappeared after several weeks only for a fresh set to develop a week later, and again after five months.
Mr. Brewis's daughter, Amanda, told The Times of London on Monday that her father's illness had mystified the medical profession. "He always knew he was a quirk of British medical history. In a way he was proud of it. He was a bit of a teaser and a prankster. He used to joke about how he must really be an animal." Mr. Brewis, who died six years ago, was living at his farm in the hamlet of Yetlington on the edge of the Cheviot Hills during the 1966 outbreak. The Department of Health made no immediate comment on the rare case.
March 27, 2001By PHILIP BRASHER, Associated PressAmericans are confusing foot-and-mouth disease, which is harmless to people, with rarer mad cow disease, which has been linked to several deaths in Europe, Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman said Tuesday. However, she said there is no evidence that the confusion has caused U.S. consumers to shun meat. "They're hearing animal disease and they don't know the difference," Veneman said. "We're trying to make sure that people understand that there is a difference."
Foot-and-mouth is primarily an economic issue. An outbreak virtually shuts down a country's meat exports, and the virus spreads so quickly that the only sure way to contain it is to destroy all exposed livestock...
29 March 01 CBS HealthWatch By Erin R. KingIt might sound scary, and but foot-and-mouth disease is not a threat to humans, according to agriculture experts. The disease, also known as hoof-and-mouth disease, has so far been detected in nearly 30 countries around the world (but not in North America). It usually doesn't kill animals, but it can cause them to become ill (it is not known to cause illness in humans)....
39 Mar 01 By JILL LAWLESS, Associated Press... Blair appealed to U.S. tourists Thursday not to cancel vacations to Britain. "We love American visitors coming over here," Blair told NBC news. "Any tourist attraction, virtually, that anyone in the United States will have heard of and wants to come and see, is open. There's not a single town, city or village, that people can't go into."
Foot-and-mouth is harmless to humans and does not normally kill animals, but it devastates trade because many countries ban meat imports from infected nations.
April 4, 2001 By BETH GARDINER, Associated PressPrime Minister Tony Blair's office said Wednesday there have been signs of progress in stemming the spread of foot-and-mouth disease, making it less likely Britain will resort to a controversial vaccination program. As the number of infected sites passed 1,000, Britain's chief scientist told Blair that the widespread slaughter of livestock was "starting to bite" into the disease, heading off worst-case projections and lessening the need for export-damaging vaccinations, said the spokesman, who declined to be named. ...
Humans cannot catch foot-and-mouth and it is not normally fatal to livestock. But because it lowers production and is highly contagious, many countries shut their doors to animal products from infected nations....
Comment (webmaster): Here again we see an ever-obedient press serving up pig swill for public consumption: humans cannot get foot-and-mouth disease; alternately, transmission is rare and symptoms are mild. And yet the disease sounds rather unpleasant. Would serious long-term health problems occur in a large exposed population in people having compromised immune systems? What about pregnant women? Do humans get undetected mycocardium damage like pigs (tiger heart)? It seems that losses in British tourism are deemed more critical than the health of (expendable) foreign visitors.
As with BSE, governments wants to bury human health concerns under a tall stack of short-lived reassurances. The press cannot be bothered with 30 seconds of fact-checking at Medline. The review article below again paints a rather different picture of the rarity of transmission:
Arch Virol Suppl 1997;13:95-7 by Bauer KMan's susceptibility to the virus of foot- and-mouth disease (FMD) was debated for many years. Today the virus has been isolated and typed (type O, followed by type C and rarely A) in more than 40 human cases. So no doubt remains that FMD is a zoonosis. Considering the high incidence of the disease (in animals) in the past and in some areas up to date, occurrence in man is quite rare.
In the past when FMD was endemic in Central Europe many cases of diseases in man showing vesicles in the mouth or on the hands and feet were called FMD. The first suggestion of a human infection with FMD was reported in 1695 by Valentini in Germany]. All reports before 1897, the year of the discovery of the virus of FMD by Loeffler and Frosch, were not of course confirmed either by isolation of the virus or by identification of immunoglobulins after infection. Nevertheless the successful self-infection reported by Hertwig in 1834 most likely seems to have been FMD in man: each of three veterinarians drank 250 ml of milk from infected cows on four consecutive days. The three men developed clinical manifestations.
Beginning in 1921 up to 1969 at least 38 papers were published, which described clinically manifest FMD in man in more than 40 proven cases. One further reported described an asymptomatic infection with FMD in man. Criteria for establishing a diagnosis of FMD in man are the isolation of the virus from the patient and/or identification of specific antibodies after infection. Laboratory tests for diagnosis of human FMD are the same as for animals. Proven cases of FMD in man have occurred in several countries in Europe, Africa and South America. The type of virus most frequently isolated man is type O followed by type C and rarely A. The incubation period in man, although somewhat variable, has not been found to be less than two days and rarely more than six days.
It is interesting to note that suspected and confirmed human cases must have no contact with susceptible livestock to avoid transmitting the disease, though person to person spread has not been reported.
March 30, 2001 CNNThe Dutch Government is preparing to slaughter up to 100,000 animals in an effort to contain the spread of foot-and-mouth disease. Three new cases of the virus were confirmed on Thursday, bringing the total in the Netherlands to 10. Prime Minister Wim Kok described the outbreak as a "national disaster."
...One of the three newly-infected farms in the Netherlands, at Kootwijkerbroek, was some distance from the other nine cases -- indicating the disease was no longer confined to a single tight cluster.
"We are very worried about the Kootwijkerbroek case because we haven't been able to trace the cause," said Dutch Agriculture Ministry spokesman Gabor Oolthuis.
The Dutch Government has acted swiftly to contain the disease. It has been granted permission by the European Union veterinary committee to vaccinate its cloven-hoofed livestock in an emergency measure to help create a firewall against the disease. It has nonetheless come in for criticism from Dutch farmers, who have accused ministers of not keeping pace with the disease.
"Almost every day another village is infected," said Dirk Duijzer, director general of the main farmers' organisation. "Almost every day the minister says he still has it under control. I suppose that's right but meanwhile foot-and-mouth continues to spread."
Ireland has reported two additional suspected cases of the disease, one of them a distance from the only existing outbreak so far. One of the two suspect cases is on a farm within the 10 kilometre (seven mile) exclusion zone surrounding the republic's only confirmed case in County Louth, on the north eastern border. The other is in the south east of the country in County Wexford. Samples from sheep at an abattoir and meat-processing plant were flown to Britain for testing after some animals displayed the symptoms....
Russia banned imports of animals, meat and meat products, milk and dairy products, fish and their products and animal feed from the EU, Eastern Europe and the former Soviet states on the Baltic. "In view of the strong measures taken by the European Union to curb the spread of the disease, the decision by the Russian authorities appears excessive and disproportionate," said a statement issued by the delegation of the European Commission in Russia....
British Prime Minister Tony Blair told CNN International television: "If you look at some of the pictures that have been on the television you see some of the burning animals and so forth you might think that the whole countryside is like this. "Less than one percent of the livestock of the country has been affected. It's very much located in particular areas where the main problems are. And we're slaughtering it out, because that is the best way to do it in order to preserve our export status, and our foot and mouth-disease-free status for the future as a country.
"There's absolutely no reason why you shouldn't come, if you're an American tourist come and visit the UK and visit as you always have, and you'll find the things that you want to do are still there for you to do..."
March 25, 2001 The Ottawa Citizen By Mark KennedyCanada quietly ordered the destruction last year of sheep imported from Denmark in the early 1990s because they were suspected of being infected with mad cow disease through contaminated feed, the Citizen has learned. Documents obtained through the Access to Information Act reveal that the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) took the action as a precaution to prevent the fatal brain-wasting disease from jumping the species barrier and spreading to other animals and to humans.
Agency officials now say none of the animals tracked down and destroyed was diagnosed as having bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), commonly known as mad cow disease. [This means little if testing protocol is not disclosed. An archaic method such as histopathology might have been chosen -- webmaster]
But that doesn't offer a total guarantee. Only 22 were found of the 111 imported in the early 1990s, killed and tested in last year's trace. Of the remainder: 38 had already died or were slaughtered; 26 were unaccounted for; 24 had been exported to the United States, and the owner of one sheep is still refusing to give up his animal to be destroyed. [And what has become of offspring of these sheep? Note that US first acquired scrapie in 1947 via Canadian imports. -- webmaster]
A "risk assessment" report prepared by the agency last September drew some stark conclusions. It found there was a "low" risk that the sheep, imported in four separate shipments in 1992 and 1994, were infected with BSE upon arrival from Denmark.
Furthermore, the report said the risk was "low to moderate" that some of the sheep, once they died, were sent to Canadian rendering plants where their remains were boiled and turned into sawdust-like, protein-rich products to be added to animal feeds. If so, this would create a route through which BSE could be spread to other Canadian livestock.
"The consequences of the identification of a case of BSE in native animals in Canada are likely to be VERY HIGH," the report warned. "In addition, the political consequences resulting from the fact that, on paper, Canada has imported ruminants from a BSE affected country can also be considered to be HIGH."
There is now strong scientific proof that animals with BSE can transmit a similar strain of the disease, known as variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (vCJD) to humans. So far, nearly 100 people in Britain and Europe have been infected with the fatal brain disorder.
The food inspection agency ordered the sheep destroyed once it learned in February 2000 that Denmark had just experienced its first case of a native-born animal (a three-year-old dairy cow) diagnosed with BSE.
An internal CFIA e-mail, sent to the agency's district offices in September after a traceback of the imported animals had occurred, left no room for staff to exercise discretion about whether to let the sheep live. "These sheep are being ordered destroyed because they are suspected of being affected or contaminated with bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE)," said the e-mail.
Canada's decision to close the borders to more Danish meat imports and destroy those animals already here was a rare event. Indeed, it was only the second time this country has taken such drastic action in connection with mad cow disease. The first occurred in 1993, when a cow previously imported to Canada from Britain developed BSE. It, and the herd in which it resided, was killed.
However, the food inspection agency did not issue a news release last year to inform the public of its action on the imported sheep. Instead, it rounded up as many of the sheep as it could find, paid the owners up to $600 for each animal, destroyed them and sent their brain samples to the agency's lab in Ottawa for analysis.
Dr. Claude Lavigne, director of the agency's animal health and production division, said in an interview there's nothing unusual about the measure not being publicly announced. "It was considered as something that was routine. There are lots of things that we do every day here that we can't issue a press release every time we do something." [What else have they failed to announce??? -- webmaster]
But questions still remain about why the agency, which has been accused by critics of being overly secretive and too close to industry, didn't announce its measures. Mr. Lavigne denied suggestions it could be the agency feared -- as its own risk assessment report appeared to suggest -- the "political consequences."
He said the use of that phrase was "unfortunate" and that a better choice of words probably would have been "trade consequences." "Some countries that we export to scrutinize our programs here. They ask us for all kinds of information. They send us questionnaires and we answer these questions as openly as we can. Some countries may have taken the negative thing, that we imported ruminants from BSE infected countries."
"To me, these are trade consequences," said Mr. Lavigne. "These risk-assessing people are scientists and sometimes they don't measure the weight of some of their words." Mr. Lavigne stressed that there have been no cases of BSE found in Canadian livestock since the 1993 incident involving the U.K.-imported cow.
Still, the risk assessment report contains some troubling findings:
- There has never been a documented case of a sheep "naturally" contracting BSE in an environment such as a farm. However, it has been scientifically proven in laboratories, where sheep are deliberately infected with the BSE agent, that the disease can jump the species barrier between cows and sheep.
- There was a "likelihood" that the sheep imported to Canada had been fed protein-enriched feeds in Denmark containing the rendered remains of other ruminant animals, such as cows. It was this practice of recycling the remains of dead animals that is now blamed for the spread of mad cow disease in Britain and Europe.
- After the sheep arrived in Canada, there is no way of knowing if any of them were also sent to Canadian rendering plants once they died. In 1997, Canada placed a ban on the use of rendered remains from ruminants, such as cows and sheep, for animal feed. But by then, the imported animals would have ranged in age from four to nine years. The industry had put a voluntary ban in place in 1991 on using sheep offal or carcasses for rendered products, but the report said "we have no information on compliance with the ban."
Usually, sheep are more closely linked to another disease, called scrapie, which is a strain of a collection of diseases called transmissible spongiform encephalopathy (TSE). Unlike mad cow disease, or BSE, there is no evidence yet that scrapie is transmissible to humans. Still, governments don't take a chance it will spread to other sheep, or that it could cross the species barrier. Last week, it was revealed 1,200 sheep have been destroyed on southern Manitoba farms in the past several months as a precaution against scrapie.
All the while, the bigger threat remains BSE. It is believed that the nearly 100 people with the human form, nvCJD, caught it by eating contaminated beef or beef byproducts. For years, it was thought Britain would be the hardest hit. But within the past few months, other countries in Europe have experienced their first cases of BSE, which has an incubation period, it is believed, of four to seven years.
Health experts are now waiting for humans in those countries to begin showing symptoms of nvCJD. Scientists believe it takes 10 to 20 years, perhaps even longer, for that disease to incubate in people.
As well, the World Health Organization is warning countries that the disease might one day become a global epidemic. That's because Britain exported its contaminated bovine meat and bone meal until 1996 to Europe, and the products were either re-exported directly, or repacked and sent abroad to as many as 80 countries. Canada says it did not import any of those beef products from Britain, although critics point to U.K. export data that, though imprecise, raise questions on the issue.
28 March 2001 Debora MacKenzieWhat if you can catch old-fashioned CJD by eating meat from a sheep infected with scrapie?
Four years ago, Terry Singeltary watched his mother die horribly from a degenerative brain disease. Doctors told him it was Alzheimer's, but Singeltary was suspicious. The diagnosis didn't fit her violent symptoms, and he demanded an autopsy. It showed she had died of sporadic Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease.
Most doctors believe that sCJD is caused by a prion protein deforming by chance into a killer. But Singeltary thinks otherwise. He is one of a number of campaigners who say that some sCJD, like the variant CJD related to BSE, is caused by eating meat from infected animals. Their suspicions have focused on sheep carrying scrapie, a BSE-like disease that is widespread in flocks across Europe and North America.
Now scientists in France have stumbled across new evidence that adds weight to the campaigners' fears. To their complete surprise, the researchers found that one strain of scrapie causes the same brain damage in mice as sCJD.
"This means we cannot rule out that at least some sCJD may be caused by some strains of scrapie," says team member Jean-Philippe Deslys of the French Atomic Energy Commission's medical research laboratory in Fontenay-aux-Roses, south-west of Paris.
Hans Kretschmar of the University of Göttingen, who coordinates CJD surveillance in Germany, is so concerned by the findings that he now wants to trawl back through past sCJD cases to see if any might have been caused by eating infected mutton or lamb.
Scrapie has been around for centuries and until now there has been no evidence that it poses a risk to human health. But if the French finding means that scrapie can cause sCJD in people, countries around the world may have overlooked a CJD crisis to rival that caused by BSE.
Deslys and colleagues were originally studying nvCJD, not sCJD. They injected the brains of macaque monkeys with brain from BSE cattle, and from French and British nvCJD patients. The brain damage and clinical symptoms in the monkeys were the same for all three. Mice injected with the original sets of brain tissue or with infected monkey brain also developed the same symptoms.
As a control experiment, the team also injected mice with brain tissue from people and animals with other prion diseases: a French case of sCJD; a French patient who caught sCJD from human-derived growth hormone; sheep with a French strain of scrapie; and mice carrying a prion derived from an American scrapie strain.
As expected, they all affected the brain in a different way from BSE and nvCJD. But while the American strain of scrapie caused different damage from sCJD, the French strain produced exactly the same pathology.
"The main evidence that scrapie does not affect humans has been epidemiology," says Moira Bruce of the neuropathogenesis unit of the Institute for Animal Health in Edinburgh, who was a member of the same team as Deslys.
"You see about the same incidence of the disease everywhere, whether or not there are many sheep, and in countries such as New Zealand with no scrapie," she says. In the only previous comparisons of sCJD and scrapie in mice, Bruce found they were dissimilar. [This is the usual British garbage, directed in this instance at protecting their sheep industry. Moira Bruce knows perfectly well that she failed to survey the known spectrum of scrapie strains. Misdiagnosis and under-reporting are widespread in CJD -- its scertainment differs widely by country; New Zealand has never reported Prionics testing despite hosting high susceptibility sheep genotypes. -- webmaster]
But there are more than 20 strains of scrapie, and six of sCJD. "You would not necessarily see a relationship between the two with epidemiology if only some strains affect only some people," says Deslys. Bruce is cautious about the mouse results, but agrees they require further investigation. Other trials of scrapie and sCJD in mice, she says, are in progress.
People can have three different genetic variations of the human prion protein, and each type of protein can fold up two different ways. Kretschmar has found that these six combinations correspond to six clinical types of sCJD: each type of normal prion produces a particular pathology when it spontaneously deforms to produce sCJD.
But if these proteins deform because of infection with a disease-causing prion, the relationship between pathology and prion type should be different, as it is in nvCJD. "If we look at brain samples from sporadic CJD cases and find some that do not fit the pattern," says Kretschmar, "that could mean they were caused by infection."
There are 250 deaths per year from sCJD in the US, and a similar incidence elsewhere. Singeltary and other US activists think that some of these people died after eating contaminated meat or "nutritional" pills containing dried animal brain. Governments will have a hard time facing activists like Singeltary if it turns out that some sCJD isn't as spontaneous as doctors have insisted.
Deslys's work on macaques also provides further proof that the human disease nvCJD is caused by BSE. And the experiments showed that nvCJD is much more virulent to primates than BSE, even when injected into the bloodstream rather than the brain. This, says Deslys, means that there is an even bigger risk than we thought that nvCJD can be passed from one patient to another through contaminated blood transfusions and surgical instruments.
March 28, 2001 Associated Press. See also related story collectionCattle imported Germany will be destroyed and tested to see if they were exposed to mad cow disease before leaving Europe in 1996 and 1997, Texas state officials said. The 21 animals will be gathered from five ranches around the state and taken to College Station to be killed. Samples of the animals' brain tissue will be sent to a national laboratory in Ames, Iowa, Animal Health Commission officials said Wednesday. The animals' remains will be incinerated.
Mad cow disease, or bovine spongiform encephalopathy, has never been detected in U.S. cattle, but has infected herds in Europe since the mid-1980s. The disease has been blamed about 100 human deaths in England. The disease attacks the brain and spinal cord.
Texas officials described the decision to destroy the cattle imported from Germany as a precaution because of public concern over mad cow disease. The cattle were part of 29 imported from Germany before a 1997 U.S. ban on European livestock. All had been under quarantine since March 1997, after health officials traced them to their current owners.
The owners, who were not identified, had declined to sell the animals $2,000 per head compensation offered by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. They waited until the National Cattlemen's Beef Association, the Texas Beef Council and the Texas Cattlefeeders Association raised an additional $57,000 for compensation.
None of the imported cattle have shown signs of the disease, said Carla Everett, a spokeswoman for the Animal Health Commission. Four of the original German animals were killed and tested for mad cow disease, and none were found to be infected, Everett said. Two others were slaughtered before the ban on European cattle, one died in 1997 and another in January, and none had symptoms of mad cow, she said.
Offspring of the cattle have been sold without restrictions because state veterinarians don't believe the calves pose a risk if the cow showed no symptoms of the disease, Everett said.
Associated Press/Houston Chronicle--Sunday 25 March 2001The U.S. Department of Agriculture says at least 21 cattle held under quarantine in Texas will soon be euthanized as part of a plan to ease concerns that some might be infected with Mad Cow disease. The cows, imported four years ago from Germany for breeding, were isolated when the outbreak of Mad Cow disease erupted in Europe, officials said. Originally, 29 cows were shipped to Texas, and USDA officials said none of those that died had the disease.
At the time when the cattle arrived in Texas four years ago, eight were imported to Colorado and one to California. They were destroyed and tested. All had negative results for BSE. The cattle are owned by several people in Texas, but officials would not specify where in the state.
Within the next few weeks, the rest will no longer be a concern, an official with the Texas Animal Health Commission said. "They will be euthanized, there is no question of that," agency spokeswoman Carla Everett told the Bryan-College Station Eagle. "The only question is when. It will be this spring." Many of the cattle brought to Texas are exotic and expensive, she said, and owners did not want to sell them for the $2,000-a-head price offered by the USDA. Because the cattle showed no symptoms of illness, they were not seized.
Subsequently, the National Cattlemans Beef Association has raised funds to meet fair market value, which was determined by a professional appraiser. "They have raised somewhere around $57,000, so between that and the $2,000 each, the deal (to destroy the cattle) is nearly done," Everett said. Brain tissue from each animal will be sent for testing to the National Veterinary Services Laboratory in Ames, Iowa.
The quarantined animals were allowed to mingle with other cattle, said Hallie Pickhardt, a spokeswoman with the USDA. "Even if they tested positive, there is no danger of them spreading the disease just by standing next to another cow," she said. "The only way this disease can be spread is by eating contaminated feed."
A poll released yesterday shows that almost two-thirds of Americans say they're concerned that Mad Cow disease could become a problem in the United States -- a number that appears to be growing.
Friday March 23,2001 APAlmost two-thirds of Americans say they're concerned that mad cow disease could become a problem in the United States - a number that appears to be growing, says a poll released Friday. About three in 10, or 29 percent, were very concerned and about four in 10, some 36 percent, were somewhat concerned, according to the CNN-USA Today-Gallup poll. A fourth, 24 percent, were not too concerned and only about one in 10, or 11 percent, were not concerned at all.
The poll was taken March 9-11 after the first reports of sheep in Vermont that might have been exposed to a form of mad cow disease and reports of concerns about tainted cow feed. But the poll was taken before widespread coverage of the slaughter of possibly infected sheep in Vermont.
Less than half of Americans said they were concerned about mad cow disease becoming a problem in this country in an ABC News-Washington Post poll taken in mid-January. While it's good to use caution when comparing the results from one organization's poll with another, dramatically different results came when the same question was asked. The latest poll of 1,015 adults had an error margin of plus or minus 3 percentage points.
Star Telegram--Saturday 24 March 2001 By Barry ShlachterAlthough none shows signs of Mad Cow disease, 21 German cattle have been under observation "for up to four years" on five ranches "scattered around Texas" because the animals may have eaten contaminated feed before being imported in 1996 and 1997, he said.
In addition, eight German- imported cattle were traced to Colorado and one to California. All were destroyed, with tests proving negative for the disease In addition, four cattle from Britain are under quarantine in Vermont, and two from Belgium are quarantined in Minnesota. Earlier, four of a total of 29 German cattle identified in Texas were killed, but tests proved negative, the report says. Three others have died of causes unrelated to BSE.
A Texas Animal Health Commission statement said that calves born to the German cattle have been freely marketed because affected bulls and cows cannot spread BSE to offspring.
Despite the report and the disease outbreaks in Europe, livestock economist Ernie Davis of Texas A&M University expects American consumer confidence in beef to remain strong because animal health authorities moved competently to ensure food safety. But whether the cumulative effect of all the bad news out of Europe might put Americans off their burgers remains to be seen.
Also Friday, the Agriculture Department said there have been no signs of Mad Cow disease in 27 cattle that were brought into the country from Europe in the 1980s and 1990s before bans on their import. There are 21 of the cattle still alive in Texas, four in Vermont, two in Minnesota and one in Illinois.
The cattle are under quarantine and they are tested as each dies. "All the tests have come back negative and no symptoms are showing," said Anna Cherry, a spokeswoman for USDA's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service.
Opinion (webmaster): Contradicting actions it took on live imports, USDA approvingly cites a mediocre British study showing low levels of maternal transmission that cow-to-calf transmission. Government web sites overall paint a confusing picture over the risks of horizontal (adult-to-adult) and vertical (cow-to-calf) transmission and the need for consequent monitoring of quarantined live imports and their calves -- USDA did nothing about calves or herd mates of imported animals despite the British study.
Horizontal transmission of other TSEs such as CWD and scrapie, as well as persistence of the agent for years in the environment, are well-documented at game farms and experimental facilities. England never tested herdmates or calves of confirmed BSE cows using modern diagnostic methods nor practised whole herd culling; BSE may become endemic -- after all, scrapie has persisted there for centuries. Because England botched the only transmission studies (to limit economic impacts), no satisfactory answers exist today on these risks.
The risk to the public from live import cows is likely overblown. First, BSE has not been reported, the numbers of cattle and calves are very small, and further spread is hypothetical; secondly, the US has more significant risks elsewhere for amplification of imported or domestic strains of TSE. As in Europe, which also had many theoretical safeguards such as import bans, probably the best way to procede is simply to test extensively with the Prionics kit to determine actual TSE status of the US herd. Indeed, Dr. Gary Weber of NCBA has called for expanded US testing.
Neither the livestock industry nor public health has been particularly well-served by recent dramatic seizures of live imports. The seizure in Vermont of three sheep flocks and their offspring deriving from a Belgian flock has focused media attention on the muddled status of live cattle imports in the US originating from BSE-affected countries such as England, Ireland, Belgium, and Germany.
According to US government web pages, 496 live cattle were imported from Jan 1981 until the first ban of July 89 predominantly from Ireland and Britain. England reported clinical BSE in 5,558 different herds during those years; there was no testing of preclinical animals then or now.
Some 16,749 UK cattle born during the Jan 1988-July 1989 period are known to have developed BSE. The years 1988-mid 1989 were the last of the bad birth years, contributing strongly to the peak onset in 1992. Only 10% (18203) of the 180,915 total reported UK BSE cases were born in later years.
Full data of BSE by year of birth has just been released to Parliament: 60 cows born in the 1970's are listed, the earliest birth year 1974. USDA has not released tracking data on live cattle imported to the US in this decade.
Note however that US imports involved speciality breeds with possibly different (hopefully better) statistics than the "average" UK cow of the time.
Germany and Belgium unfortunately had to be considered BSE-free despite suspicious imports of UK meal and bone meal; no live import ban from these countries could be implemented until Dec 1997. Belgium reported finding its first case on 31 Oct 97 and has acknowledged 23 cases of BSE in total, finding 4 positives in 60,492 confirmed BioRad tests of aclinical animals in recent months for an incidence rate of 66 per million.
After 15 years of steadfast denial, Germany began testing in November of 2000. So far, 55 cases have been found (1, 2)with the earliest four born in 1994; in Prionics testing yielding 22 positives out of 381,481 tests giving an incidence rate of 58 per million.
Europe has conducted a total of 1,101,547 tests for BSE in recent months, finding 77 positives for an incidence rate of 70 per million of normal slaughter age. That incidence may have been higher or lower at the time the US was importing animals from Belgium and Germany.
| Origin | Live Imports in Year | Alive | State | Ranches | Died and Tested |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Britain | 4 in 1996-97 | 4 | Vermont | 1 | 0 |
| Belgium | 2 in 1996? | 2 | Minnesota | 1 | 0 |
| Germany | 29 in 1996-97 | 21 | Texas | 5 | 4 tested, 3 not. Calves sold. |
| Germany | 8 in 1996-97 | 0 | California | 1 | 8 |
| Germany | 1 in 1996-97 | 0 | Colorado | 1 | 1 |
| Germany | 1 in 1996? | 1 | Illinois | 1 | 0 |
The Braakman site gives current data on how many tests have been conducted by each country and how many positives were found. Spain is a bit uncertain on number of tests conducted and its rate seems too high. 60 cases of BSE per million healthy cattle of slaughter age is a typical figure. The US has tested about 13,000 cattle and plans to do another 5,000, putting it well below Germany and France but in line with countries such as Croatia.
| Country | Tested | Positives |
|---|---|---|
| Austria | 32,125 | 0 |
| Belgium | 60,492 | 4 |
| Denmark | 53,911 | 1 |
| France | 340,531 | 9 |
| Germany | 381,481 | 22 |
| Ireland | 48,021 | 0 |
| Italy | 54,500 | 9 |
| Netherlands | 80,996 | 4 |
| Spain | 30,000 | 29 |
| Switzerland | 22,697 | 1 |
| Totals: | 1,104,754 | 79 |
| Incidence | per million: | 71.5 |
Tue, 27 Mar 2001 APItaly confirmed two more cases of mad cow disease Tuesday, bringing the total number of infected animals to nine. Another suspected case in central Italy awaits final results.
The infected cows were found in two separate farms in the northern Lombardy region, said the Health Ministry. Final analyses of the brain tissue were conducted in a Turin-based zoological institute.
Italy has tested more than 54,500 animals since the beginning of the year, when the European Union began requiring tests on cattle older than 30 months destined for slaughter. About 1,000 tests await final results, the Health Ministry said.
Many experts believe that bovine spongiform encephalopathy, the formal name for mad cow disease, can be transmitted to people who eat meat from infected animals. So far, Italy has had no human cases.