1. Mad Cow Disease Making sense of the headlines by Trevor Murdock

2. Outline n What is Mad Cow Disease? n What is CJD? n What has happened so far? n North America - Status n North America - Signs of Mad Cow Disease?

3. What is Mad Cow Disease? n Transmissible Spongiform Encephalophy (TSE) –Scrapie - Sheep –BSE - Cows –Kuru - Cannibals

4. What is CJD? n CJD - Humans –brain-wasting disorder: blindness, dementia, loss of motor functions –natural occurrence 1 in a million –average age 63 n vCJD - Humans, transmissible –from beef (or other meat/animal products)? –onset at earlier age –incubation depends on exposure

5. What has happened so far? n Britain n Europe n Government (in)action –protect cattle industry (at expense of citizens! & history repeated with FMD) n Media attention –also focus on cattle industry more than people

6. North America - Status n ruminants still eating parts of ruminants (scrapie infected sheep are fed to pigs) n 13 percent of 397 US feed mills that process meat and bone meal have no system for preventing products from being mixed!!! n spray-dried blood products in feed n gelatin?, dairy?, bovine-derived products, including glandular extracts, collagen, glucosamine and chondroitin n virtually no testing !!! - Italy only found BSE when it started testing

7. North America - Signs of Mad Cow Disease? n Apr 1996 - Nov 1997, NE Texas (~1 million): 8 CJD cases (younger than average). From the Texas Dept of health as quoted by Howard Lyman in Mad Cowboy. n Pittsburgh autopsies of 54 patients died of dementia, 3 of them had CJD. From Neurology, 1989, 39 (1): pp. 76-69 as quoted by Howard Lyman in Mad Cowboy. n Alzheimer’s ??? - similar symptoms

8. Canada n cattle fed to cattle in Canada until 1997 - good chance of BSE +ve offspring in food chain NOW n 11 cattle from Britain got into Canada’s food chain in 1993 (according to a European Union scientific committee) n 2 blood donors had died of CJD in 1995 n Canada not in lowest risk rank ( European Commission report 2000)

9. Summary n Mad Cow Disease risk is real n Cannot wait for government to protect the food supply (deny human risk as long as possible, protect industry) n Many questionable practices remain n Increased exposure --> increased risk and reduced incubation period n Best protection: reduce --> eliminate beef, meat, dairy, gelatin, etc.