MAD COW DISEASE

Study Suggests More Deaths From Mad Cow Disease

The long lives that some former cannibals enjoy before succumbing to a brain-wasting disease suggest that many more humans will eventually die of mad cow disease, scientists said Thursday. But several experts in such illnesses, called prion diseases — which are blamed for killing New Guinea cannibals and British eaters of infected beef — disagreed with that frightening implication of the study, which is to be published Friday in The Lancet, a British medical journal. These experts praised the rigorous work the authors of the report did to confirm that kuru, a disease that once decimated highland tribes in New Guinea, can incubate for 50 years in a few genetically protected people. But the experts said they thought that the findings did not prove that there would be future waves of deaths among people who ate beef from prion-infected cows in the 1980's. "That's a provocative conclusion, but I'm not sure it's totally plausible," said Dr. David Westaway, a prion expert at the University of Toronto. Thus far, only about 160 people, mostly in Britain, have died of variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, which humans get from cows that had bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or mad cow disease. The authors chronicled the deaths and genetic makeup of 11 aging members of the Fore tribe who died from 1996 to 2004 of kuru, which can lie dormant for years but then start a quick, irreversible descent into dementia and death. Kuru killed thousands of Fore beginning in the 1920's and only began to fade after the Australian authorities in the 1950's outlawed the Fore practice of honoring their dead by butchering them with bamboo knives at mortuary feasts, eating them and — by some accounts — smearing themselves with brain tissue, which would drive infection into cuts and scratches....

Second "Mad Cow" Human Case Detected in Netherlands

A second case of the human variant of mad cow disease has been detected in the Netherlands, the National Institute for Public Health said on Thursday. The patient is thought to have contracted the brain wasting Creutzfeldt-Jakob (vCJD) disease by eating meat from the same infected batch of beef as the Utrecht woman who died last year. The 26-year-old woman from Utrecht was the first person diagnosed with the human form of the BSE (Mad Cow Disease) in the Netherlands. Experts believe the Utrecht woman contracted the disease 20 years ago by eating infected beef. The disease vCJD is characterized by the sponge-like degeneration of the victim's brain, but it is also difficult to diagnose. It can take years for a diagnosis to be made. Doctors are powerless to reverse the illness and can only help ease the patient's pain. A person with vCJD usually dies within 18 months....

Punish Japan if won't buy US beef: Senate panel

The United States should impose economic sanctions on Japan if it fails to put aside its fears of mad cow disease and open its borders to U.S. beef by the end of the summer, the Senate Appropriations Committee voted on Thursday. Committee members added the nonbinding language to a fiscal 2007 agricultural funding bill that might be debated in the Senate at the same time Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi visits the White House. "I hope he takes heed of this," said Montana Republican Conrad Burns, sponsor of the "sense of the Senate" language. Burns said a U.S.-Japan agreement on Wednesday on steps to restart trade was just "another stalling tactic" to stretch out Japan's ban on U.S. beef, imposed as a precaution against mad cow disease. Japan, the longtime No. 1 importer of U.S. beef, has barred trade for 28 of the past 29 months. U.S. cattle groups are losing faith in negotiations with Japan. The National Cattlemen's Beef Association said this week's agreement had few concrete steps and no date for opening trade. Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns "does not support sanctions," said a spokeswoman, but "he fully understands the frustration among members of Congress."....

Feed shipped to Kentucky recalled over possible mad cow violation

Livestock feed ingredients shipped to Kentucky and eight other states may have been contaminated with cattle remains in violation of a 1997 ban to protect against mad cow disease, a manufacturer said Tuesday. H.J. Baker & Bro. Inc. said it was recalling three livestock feed ingredients, including two used to supplement feed given to dairy cows. A sample tested by the Food and Drug Administration was positive for cattle meat and bone meal, said Mark Hohnbaum, president of the Westport, Conn.-based company’s feed products group. Mad cow disease is only known to spread when cows eat feed containing brain and other nerve tissue from infected cattle. Protein from cattle was commonly added to cattle feed to speed growth until the ban largely outlawed the practice. Cattle tissue may have contaminated two feed ingredients given to dairy cows — Pro-Lak and Pro-Amino II — made by H.J. Baker between August 2005 and June. The third of the recalled ingredients, Pro-Pak with Porcine Meat and Bone, was mislabeled. It is used in poultry feed. The company announced the recall in the wake of ongoing FDA inspections of its Albertville, Ala. plant, Hohnbaum said. The inspections have found manufacturing and clerical issues, he added. Besides Kentucky, the company shipped the ingredients to feed manufacturers and dairy farms in Alabama, California, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi and Tennessee. The company is notifying its customers of the voluntary recall. It does not know how much of the feed ingredients it sold, Hohnbaum said....