24 U.S. senators urge Bush to demand that Japan lift beef import restrictions

Many European countries don’t accept US meat since many years, not because of the mad cow disease, but the growth hormone contained in the meat. (For example, European McDonald’s don’t use the US meat) In France, they use French, Argentine, or Brazilian meat. (They stopped to use the British meat since several years because of the mad cow disease)

I wonder why the American consumers accept all those poorly controlled food, or artificial substances in their food (artificial colours, flavours, vitamins, gene modified products…)
Americans should fight against these insane foods.

And it’s true, Kobe or Matsuzaka beef are so tasty and are the best meats in the world. (I heard that in Europe, only the Japanese embassies could get these meats, because Japan can’t export meat to Europe.)

 

have been urging the Japanese government to lift the restrictions, but...

 

Yes, the use of recycled bone meal, brains, etc. in cattle feed has been banned, which has likely avoided a massive outbreak of BSE in the US, but the US has also found a number of recent cases in cattle much younger than 8 years old. There have been three US cases since 2003, with the most recent last year in March 2006. So either someone is still mixing bone mean into the cattle feed or else the disease is spreading through other means, but the change in feed rules hasn't stopped the disease.

Especially since the USDA has been testing only about 1% of the animals headed for slaughter, a number of other cases beyond the three discovered undoubtedly went unnoticed into the food supply, perhaps as many as 30 animals over the last four years alone. The odds of you having eating one of those animals is slim, but probably a couple thousand people ate meat from each of those animals. Keep up your high hopes that you're not one of them.

And don't consider the fact that you're not sick yet as proof that you're not infected. Most scientists estimate that the standard incubation rate for vCJD is 30 years or more, although they have seen a handful of cases that appear to have developed in less than half or a third of that time. So come back in 30 years and tell us whether or not you're still feeling O.K.

Granted, with such a long incubation, if someone is already middle-aged, eating beef is probably O.K. in terms of BSE. vCJD, if contracted, would set in so late in life that the person would probably already be dead from heart disease from too much red meat or something like that before the vCJD set in. Still, for anyone whose life expectancy isn't already half finished, eating untested beef is a real gamble.

 

Before eating the hamburger today, I thought about the safety of the ground beef patty.
If the beef is so dangerous, how can the US government allow to sell beef? Everybody eats beef basically everyday. No one ever was diagnosed as having the vCJD in the US except one lady who appareantly contracted the disease while living in England. No cow was died of the Mad Cow Disease(MCD) since 2003 in the US.

Then why the Japanese people are so afraid of the American beef?
Because every single cow is not tested for MCD?
When the cows are bred and grown with the same environment and same cow meals why every cow needs to be tested? The test is very time-consuming, and cannot be tested with the cows' blood, but needs the slaughtered cow's brain tissue.
If the Japanese government still insists on testing every cow's brain for MCD, the US government should consider doing it although the testings can raise the price of beef slightly higher.
I wonder the Japanese government plays the game with the US using this issue as a leverage for a political gain.

For Japanese people, high quality beef with reasonable price will be an excellent source of nutritional protein.

The taste of the hamburger was better than ever.

 

I could not find those cases in the INTRENET.

Can you find them?
I predict those cows were probably imported from Canada.
Are they beef cows or milk cows?



Why do you concern about the human disease if you are not cannibal?
The cow's MCD has the incubation time 30 months-8 years.
When cows have not not fed with bone meals for 8 years, and the cows dinn't develop the MCD by then, and the cows were tested for the MCD, then what is the problem eating the beef of that cow?

 

far be it from me to trash you, but you really aren't making a lot of sense! No-one ever suggested eating human meat! That's just a product of your fevered imagination I think..! The point is, that if a person has contracted vCJD by eating contaminated beef, the symptoms won't show up for donkey's years! The incubation period of BSE in cattle is irrelevant when you're talking about infected humans, because the human can't show signs of the disease until his or her incubation period is over - and that varies between people by the way, so if you and your friend ate contaminated beef in 1990, it's totally possible that one of you could get ill and die of vCJD several years before the other.

Let's make a list of how it happens;
1. Cow gets infected.
2. After disease has incubated in the cow, maybe 8 years later, it starts walking in a wobbly manner and goes weird.
3. Cow is slaughtered, then eaten by several hundred people - some of whom may become infected.
4. After disease has incubated in the infected humans, maybe up to 30 years they will begin to show Alzheimer's like symptoms, but the disease will progress far more rapidly than Alzheimer's, and without treatment to slow it down the person may be dead within a year.
5. The meat from the human will NOT be eaten - not even by Highhope.

THAT is why the incubation period in humans matters to this discussion! And why does it matter whether your US BSE cows were imported? Their genes are all over your country now, regardless of where they started life. Disease is no respecter of nationality, race, or gender - and if you actually try searching the INTERNET you might find info about US BSE cases - but don't expect to find American web-sites about it, because it's being buried under tonnes of bribes and corruption so that the little people like YOU will continue buying US beef!
2003 http://www.mindfully.org/Farm/2003/Mad-Cow-Second-Herd27dec03.htm
2006 http://www.foodnavigator.com/news/ng.asp?n=66418-bse-japan-usda
(that one mentions the other case, but doesn't make it clear - what else can you expect from the USA?)

This site tells you the state of your US beef industry;
http://www.britishmeat.com/american-meat/index.html
Here's a nice quote from it; "The notion that every last bit of the cow needs to be turned into some kind of profit is just extraordinary." It's also increasing YOUR risks!

 

Yozora,
Of course, we are not cannibal. The cannibalism is more dangerous than cJCD. Please don't trash me like the dead meat!

The cow contracted with MCD you quoted from the internet was 10 year-old, which means the cow was fed with the bone meal the US government banned 9 years ago. No young cows were diagnosed having this disease yet.

As long as the cows are fed herbivorous, no cow will be infected because the only mode of transmission is from eating the infected meat or bone.

Then why do you worry if the cows are younger than 9 years old, and never fed with bone meals, and the sample cow was tested for MCD? Of course, the sample cows for the testignhave to be from the same herd in the same ranch.



Piron is not the gene. I don't think it is passed on to the offsprings as a genetic disease.

 

several thousand people will be infected w/ BSE over several years while the profits are substantial. That concept may fly in the US, but I'm sure they know that food purity is REALLY a big issue in Japan. And, from US sources, they know Japanese public resistance to contaminated beef is high.

 

Abe will be offered beef for the dinner in the US.
He will eat reluctantly after he confirmed GWB swallows the steak first.
And, he will ask him "Are you OK?".
Then Bush will say as a joke, 'Moo~~".
Those two may contract the disease.

I think Japan is too afarid of the American beef.

 

"I could not find those cases in the INTRENET.

Can you find them?"

Check the BSE statistics section.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bovine_spongiform_encephalopathy

 

24 U.S. senators
24 arrogant idiots who seem to have forgotten simple sales/customer protocol's... how arrogant can you get??

 

Thank you.

I still have not changed my mind to continue eating beef occasionally but not frequently only because of high cholesterol content.

I also understand the concerns of Japanese people in light od extremely long incubation time for the humane vCJD. Who knows i might get contracted from the beef I ate in 1980's.

But, as I argued in the previous post, you may be able to understand that the American beef is indeed safe to consume if;
1. The cow was never fed with the meat and bone meals. Because the only mode of transmission is through eating infected meat or bone or similar nerve tissues.

2. Tests for MCD was done after the cow was slaughtered.

 

"I don't think it is passed on to the offsprings as a genetic disease."
Actually, although they can't be 100% sure either way, there IS evidence that BSE/vCJD may be passed from the mother to her offspring. Including the much disputed case of a woman in Britain who died of vCJD 7 months after giving birth, and her baby went on to develop strange symptoms which fit very closely the symptoms of vCJD.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/928284.stm
There's no update on the story, but even in the UK there's a lot of pressure on the government to cover these things up.

There's also evidence that it may be transmitted via blood transfusions - but as it's still impossible to do a blood test for it there's not much people can do when they have to decide whether to allow a loved one to receive a transfusion.

BTW, Moderators, I believe I accidentally "reported" one of the posts on this page. I'm very sorry about it, and I'm not sure which one it was - it was caused by a sudden twitch in my thumb. (Hope I'm not showing the first symptoms of vCJD ... being British it IS, unfortunately, possible!)

 

because it typically rolls on with it's own plans...hormone-treated beef will 'accidentally' find it's way into a shipment to Japan, same way GMO corn seed was 'accidentally' shipped (from USA) to and planted in New Zealand: upon discovery of it's GM status, whole fields of GM corn were uprooted and destroyed. YAY NZ !!
http://www.converge.org.nz/pirm/ctrlfood.htm

 

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