"New case of mad cow disease in California" by Lauran Neergaard | Associated Press, April 25, 2012
WASHINGTON - The first new case of mad cow disease in the United States since 2006 has been discovered in a dairy cow in California, but health authorities said Tuesday that the animal never was a threat to the nation’s food supply.
And why would anyone believe them at this point?
The infected cow, the fourth ever discovered in the United States, was found as part of an Agriculture Department surveillance program that tests about 40,000 cows a year for the fatal brain disease.
No meat from the cow was bound for the food supply, said John Clifford, the department’s chief veterinary officer.
So the liars of government proclaim.
Mad cow disease, or bovine spongiform encephalopathy, sometimes designated as BSE, is fatal to cows and can cause a fatal brain disease in people who eat tainted beef. The World Health Organization has said tests show that humans cannot be infected by drinking milk from BSE-infected animals.
After a massive outbreak in Britain that peaked in 1993, the United States intensified precautions to keep the disease out of US cattle and the food supply. In other countries, the infection’s spread was blamed on farmers adding recycled meat and bone meal from infected cows into cattle feed, so a key US step has been to ban feed containing such material.
Clifford said Tuesday that the California cow is what scientists call an atypical case, because the animal did not get the disease from eating infected cattle feed, which is important.
That means it is “just a random mutation that can happen every once in a great while in an animal,’’ said Bruce Akey, director of the New York State Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory at Cornell University.
Yeah, sure.
The testing system worked because it caught what is a really rare event, added Mike Doyle, director of the University of Georgia’s Center for Food Safety.
Clifford did not say when the disease was discovered or exactly where the cow was raised. He said the cow was at a rendering plant in central California when the case was discovered through regular USDA sample testing....
Rendering plants process animal parts for products not going into the human food chain, such as animal food, soap, chemicals, or other household products....
So they claim. Think I trust the corporate media anymore?
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Better let those burgers thaw before you put 'em on the grill:
"Frozen cattle are contamination risk in Colorado" April 18, 2012
DENVER - It may take explosives to dislodge a group of cows that wandered into an old ranger cabin high in the Rocky Mountains, then died and froze solid when they could not get out.
The carcasses were discovered by two Air Force Academy cadets when they snowshoed up to the cabin in late March. Rangers believe the animals sought shelter during a snowstorm and got stuck and were not smart enough to find their way out....
Forest Service spokesman Steve Segin said officials are concerned about water contamination in the nearby hot springs if the cows start decomposing during the thaw.
The options: use explosives to break up the cows, burn down the cabin, or use a helicopter or trucks to haul out the carcasses.
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