Cow in South Carolina tests positive for mad cow disease

[vavavroom]

Coming in contact with contaminated deer feces could probably be enough.

Transmission and Detection of Prions in Feces

In chronic wasting disease (CWD) of cervids and scrapie of sheep, prions appear to be transmitted horizontally. Oral exposure to prion-tainted blood, urine, saliva and feces has been suggested as the mode of transmission for CWD and scrapie among herbivores ...

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

The primary path of infection with BSE in cattle is through contaminated feed. BSE can spread between animals via bodily fluids and by coprophagia. The primary path of infection with BSE in humans is through the consumption of infected tissue, especially brain and spinal cord fluid. Muscle tissue is generally considered safe for consumption but due to cross-contamination in meat processing brain and spinal fluid may contaminate the muscle tissue. Cow's milk never contains the disease -causing prions.

Prions are hard to kill. Extreme heat for hours or chemicals can do it. If you get a prion disease, and there's a handful out there, you are out of luck because there's no cure and they are all fatal.

 

[ripcord]

Oh man I was stationed in England at the time they had their mad cow scare. I still can't donate blood since I lived there at the time and ate British beef.

Huh, I didn't know it but the mad cow disease can take 30 years or more to show up in humans after infection.

 

[PWMDMD]

I know there are sporadic and familial forms of Creuzfeldt-Jacob, another prion disease, and I wonder if there are sporadic and familial forms of bovine spongiform encephalitis? In other words, forms that aren't transmitted in the feed.

 

[vavavroom]

Huh, I didn't know it but the mad cow disease can take 30 years or more to show up in humans after infection.

Infected cows show symptoms only after several years. BSE can be detected no earlier than a few months before the appearance of symptoms.

 

[vavavroom]

I know there are sporadic and familial forms of Creuzfeldt-Jacob, another prion disease, and I wonder if there are sporadic and familial forms of bovine spongiform encephalitis? In other words, forms that aren't transmitted in the feed.

BSE is the disease cattle can carry and CJD is the disease people get from consuming BSE-infected cattle. Cattle don't get CJD, and people don't get BSE. CJD is the human variant of BSE.

 

[vavavroom]

Oh man I was stationed in England at the time they had their mad cow scare. I still can't donate blood since I lived there at the time and ate British beef.

Same here. I wasn't stationed but as a teen I spent a few years in the UK in the early to mid-'90s. I must not donate blood in the US. I don't remember eating beef there.

 

[TumblrDucks]

Uh, are beef still safe to consume? The report mentions we have several safe guard measures, but why this cow still gets it?

 

[vavavroom]

Uh, are beef still safe to consume? The report mentions we have several safe guard measures, but why this cow still gets it?

We will have to wait and see if they can determine the cause of the outbreak. Cattle isn't routinely tested for BSE so we can't know if this a very rare incident or just the tip of the iceberg. The BSE outbreak originated in the UK in 1987 and snowballed from there.

Properly processed cuts of meat should be safe to eat. Opt for grass-fed over beef from cattle that get fed who-knows-what kind of feed. Regulations or not, not everyone in the food industry adheres to food safety standards. Stay away from beef products that contain spine, bone marrow, and especially brain. Better skip oxtail soup, beef bone marrow soup, and fried cow brains.

A few hundred people come down with CJD in the US every year. Some got it probably while traveling abroad. Others may get it from indulging in eating squirrel brains. Squirrels may carry prion diseases that result in CJD in humans. I'm looking at you Cajuns!

 

[PWMDMD]

BSE is the disease cattle can carry and CJD is the disease people get from consuming BSE-infected cattle. Cattle don't get CJD, and people don't get BSE. CJD is the human variant of BSE.

Sigh, I know, but they are both prion diseases which means their pathogenesis maybe similar. They are the same disease we just choose to call them different names when in humans or cows. There’s no fundamental difference between the two diseases - both are caused by misfolded protein that causes a cascade of misfolded proteins with the only difference being how that protein is introduced - sporadic due to a spontaneous mutation, familial due to a germline mutation, or transmissible due to consumption of an animal that already has the misfolded protein. If humans can have sporadic cases due to spontaneous mutation then it stands to reason cows can too. My real question was are there documented cases of sporadic bovine spongiform encephalitis? I don’t know the animal science/veterinarian literature.

 

[ecotourist]

One of our neighbours (in Edmonton) died of mad cow disease. It's rare but it does happen.

You have to be a bit fatalistic about all this - could be hit by a mereorite, could get mad cow disease, could get many other rare (or more likely common) things. But the sun will (probably) come up tomorrow.

Just remember, "no-one gets out alive".

 

[SC Maintenance]

Infected cows show symptoms only after several years. BSE can be detected no earlier than a few months before the appearance of symptoms.

Our Canadian friends say there is no test - only symptoms and then analysis of the cow's brain after death. So how will they go about finding out if there are more cases?

"There is no test to diagnose any form of BSE in live animals, although a tentative diagnosis may be made based on clinical signs. Diagnosis can only be confirmed by laboratory examination of the animal's brain after its death."

Fact sheet – Atypical bovine spongiform encephalopathy (atypical BSE) - Canadian Food Inspection Agency

Atypical BSE is one form of BSE. It is different from classical BSE, which was responsible for the BSE epidemic that started in the United Kingdom in 1986.

inspection.canada.ca

 

[vavavroom]

Sigh, I know, but they are both prion diseases which means their pathogenesis maybe similar. They are the same disease we just choose to call them different names when in humans or cows. There’s no fundamental difference between the two diseases - both are caused by misfolded protein that causes a cascade of misfolded proteins with the only difference being how that protein is introduced - sporadic due to a spontaneous mutation, familial due to a germline mutation, or transmissible due to consumption of an animal that already has the misfolded protein. If humans can have sporadic cases due to spontaneous mutation then it stands to reason cows can too. My real question was are there documented cases of sporadic bovine spongiform encephalitis? I don’t know the animal science/veterinarian literature.

Both diseases are TSEs. BSE prions propagate as a variant causing CJD or sporadic CJD. This has been demonstrated in transgenic mice. There's probably a genetic mutation that facilitates the hereditary development of CJD. Sporadic CJD is presumed to account for the vast majority of occurrences of CJD.

 

[vavavroom]

One of our neighbours (in Edmonton) died of mad cow disease. It's rare but it does happen.

You have to be a bit fatalistic about all this - could be hit by a mereorite, could get mad cow disease, could get many other rare (or more likely common) things. But the sun will (probably) come up tomorrow.

Just remember, "no-one gets out alive".

The probability of catching a prion disease is very low. By taking precautions you can improve your odds of dying from anything else considerably. I'd rather die choking on a tasty ribeye than die slowly from dementia caused by CJD.

 

[PWMDMD]

The probability of catching a prion disease is very low. By taking precautions you can improve your odds of dying from anything else considerably. I'd rather die choking on a tasty ribeye than die slowly from dementia caused by CJD.

Or quickly. My wife’s favorite aunt was normal at Thanksgiving, unable to speak by Christmas, and dead by Easter. She had a presumptive diagnosis of early onset rapidly progressing dementia but her post-mortem showed CJD.

 

[ecotourist]

I'd rather die choking on a tasty ribeye than die slowly from dementia caused by CJD.

Me too. Dementia caused by anything.

A perfect way to die would be in my sleep, in my mid to late 90s, after a life in good health. Dementia is one of the worst things that can happen to anyone. And I've seen it many times.

 

[Lubener]

Cow masking is next.

 

[Thermo1223]

here we go again

A neighbor said this about the whole chicken wing shortage. We still had plenty of chickens though...manufactured fear.

This is not diminishing the seriousness of BSE but I am not one to believe the sky is falling right away.

 

[97K15004WD]

A few hundred people come down with CJD in the US every year. Some got it probably while traveling abroad. Others may get it from indulging in eating squirrel brains. Squirrels may carry prion diseases that result in CJD in humans. I'm looking at you Cajuns!

That is new information for me. Now I have to research this about squirrels - and since squirrels are just rats with furry tails, does this mean rats too?

 

[97K15004WD]

Read the article you posted:

Study: Bleach Deactivates CWD Prions On Metal Surfaces​

New Research Confirms Bleach Works On Stainless Steel, But Not Tissue
By Shamane Mills
Published:

• Thursday, October 10, 2019, 5:30am

These two sentences really stick out to me:

"In March, state DNR officials said they were coordinating with the Department of Agriculture, Trace and Consumer Protection on new rules for the deer farming industry.

Since the DNR began testing for CWD in Wisconsin, there have been 5,302 positives out of 227,718 sampled. "

That's a lot of positive samples. I quit eating deer a very long time ago, after I saw how the deer was processed at a locally owned meat processor (and his operation was licensed by the state of SC).

 

[PWMDMD]

A neighbor said this about the whole chicken wing shortage. We still had plenty of chickens though...manufactured fear.

This is not diminishing the seriousness of BSE but I am not one to believe the sky is falling right away.

BSE has been detected now 7x in the past 20 years in the US.

"Atypical BSE usually occurs in older cattle and seems to arise spontaneously in cattle populations"

From the OP's article:

"Officials stated that BSE is not contagious and has two types, classical and atypical. They added that Classical BSE is the form that mainly occurred in the United Kingdom, beginning in the late 1980s, and was linked to variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD) in people.

Officials said this case is only the seventh confirmed case of BSE in the United States. They further explained that the United States has safeguards that protect public and animal health. These safeguards include a feed ban that protects cattle from the disease and removing the parts of an animal that would contain BSE before it is slaughtered for consumption. There is also an ongoing BSE surveillance program that helps the United States Department of Agriculture to detect the disease."

This was an atypical case - not the end of the world.

BSE Cases Identified in the United States BSE (Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy) | Prion Diseases | CDC

Cases of BSE in the United States and Canada. Strains of BSE and Feed bans.

www.cdc.gov