Chapters 10 & 11By: Tanisha Bethea

Chapter 10: Keeping the Madness Out

“Several measures help ensure that animal prion diseases do not contaminiate the U.S. food supply—but there are gaps.”

Economic Benefit vs. Unwanted Goods

Travel and trade have brought numerous benefits

Technology, food items, clothing…etc

And unwanted goods: Zebra Mussels:

ecological destruction Long-horned beetles West Nile Virus Imported beef BSE?

Cows in the Crosshairs

Corporate Blvd in New Jersey home of Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, an arm of the USDA

Mission to protect American agriculture

Linda Detwiler-government senior staff vet

Detwiler’s responsibilities: APHIS surveillance coordination, prevention, educatoin activities and helped develop the U.S. response plan in the event a mad cow is discovered

Media spokesperson for TSE related issue

Cows in the Crosshairs CNTD.

Conflicting roles of the USDA

Consumer protector as well as advocate for industry helping ranchers, farmers etc.

Mad cows secretly wandering American feed lots?

Early on the U.S. didn’t look very hard. BSE testing in cattle brains began in 1990.

Was U.S. doing enough? They argue yes.

Bovine Barricades

Protection stems from regulations Detwiler claims restrictions already in place spared the U.S.

Says restrictions actually prevented a lot of BSE material from unknowingly being imported

USDA (1989) with first regulations restricting imports of ruminants from BSE countries

Based on mere risk alone? Was this the smartest decision?

More Barriers

FDA: most notable ban in 1997 on most mammalian protein from ruminant feed

Lastly, the U.S. Customs Service which screens goods entering the counrty and the USDA

Why even with all these firewalls was it still possible for BSE infected agents to reach U.S.?

George M. Gray- assessed effectiveness of the regulations

Bans but what about in house problems?

Why not the same extremes as Europe?

Breaks in the Firewall

In theory, regulations should keep BSE out of the country but every system has its faults.

Human error Rebellion Do these regulations give

us a false sense of security that we would be better without?

USDA surveillance example

Other means of leakage

Chicken litter may be fed to cows which circumvents the proper labeling of animal feed

Dead-on-the- farm animals (now being tested USDA)

International bulk mail Discrepancies in the info

that importers provide

Wording of the regulations themselves may also be problematic

Time it takes to address issues

Feed ban most critical part but also weakest Because of enforcement Only real weapon is

warning letter Should FDA be

designated more power?

Problems with enforcement

Why the warning letter is not effective?

Red tape

Empowerment and why it works

FDA has no strategy to enforce compliance and prefers to educate and work in cooperation

Strategy seems to work for FDA:

2001-2002 compliance fallen at most to 7-8%

Many firms voluntarily comply but why?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CBs5xJpFg-A

Despite gaps in the firewall the risk of BSE appearing in the U.S. is probably low.

Reassuring?

American Madness

Mink industry struck and spread rapidly

Common denominator was a feed discovered by G.R. Hartsough and Dieter Burger

Richard Marsh along with William Hadlow describes mink symptoms and finds out they were fed infected downer cows

No species barrier Unrecognized BSE-like

infection in American cattle and other countries

Richard Marsh

Arguing that prion disease here was different from the BSE that appeared in Brittain.

Recognized implications of an American strain and lobbied for beef industry to end practice

Asked to stand down and persisted

Ban was made right after his death

In Case of Emergency

Cows might exhibit different strains

Richard Marsh inspired new research Testing of downer cattle Immunohistochemistry Still no evidence to

support his theory however

Temptations to hide mad cow

Numbers are good but is this because of the effects a scare would have?

Pigs and Sheep

Feed can still go to pigs and chickens both of which make the prion protein naturally

So far it hasn’t been found in chickens or pigs

Michael Hansen however believes the pig-feeding experiment was flawed

Chapter 11: Scourge of the Cervids

What started as an epidemic among deer and elk in Wisconsin spread across the nation

Special hunting periods Disease spreads more

aggressively than scrapie among sheep

Out and About

First farmed elk displayed signs of CWD inn 1996 on a ranch in Canada and spread rapidly to wild populations

Aggressive measures to depopulate

Transport of incubating cervids

Unknown exactly how these animals became infected

Massive killing projects effectiveness difficult to call

Venison and Beyond

No one knows whether CWD can spread to humans

Hard time converting human prion protein

Dosage matters is this why we haven’t seen occurrences? Or is it simply not transmissible

Three young venison eaters

Does CWD pose a threat to domestic livestock