Chapters 10 & 11 By: 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  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:  compliance fallen at most to 7-8%  Many firms voluntarily comply but why?  /watch?v=CBs5xJpFg-A /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