A case of mad cow disease has been confirmed on a farm in Somerset.

today's case is the first since 2018, when the disease was found on a farm in Scotland.
So if this is really the first case since 2018 how has the disease laid dormant? More probable is the fact that with covid the spread hasnt been tracked nor traced and that it truly hasnt gone away its just not been found due the inability for vets and the ministry to be able to look for it sadly.

WHAT IS MAD COW DISEASE?
Mad cow disease, or bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), is a fatal neurological disease in cattle caused by an abnormal protein that destroys the brain and spinal cord.

The disease was first identified in Great Britain in 1986, although research suggests the first infections may have spontaneously occurred in the 1970s.

It is believed to be spread by feeding calves meat and bone meal contaminated with BSE.

Humans can contract variant Creutzfeldt-Jacob disease (vCJD) if beef products contaminated with central nervous system tissue from cattle infected with mad cow disease are eaten. There is no treatment and 177 people have been killed by the variant.

There were 36,000 diagnosed cases of mad cow disease in Great Britain in 1992, leading to British beef exports being banned and dozens of people dying.

In August 1996, a British coroner ruled that Peter Hall, a 20-year old vegetarian who died of vCJD, contracted the disease from eating beef burgers as a child.

The verdict was the first to legally link a human death to mad cow disease.

I believe that BSE was caused by mandatory use of OP dips and pour-ons to treat and eradicate warble fly in the 70s and 80s.

Though I certainly don’t condone the diet of the animals it was a convenient scape goat to protect the government, MAFF and big chemical companies at the time.

MR

a reply to: Marlborough Red

Interesting and also worryingly believable.

I would love to see some more research and data on that but given you have sent a lot of members onto that path now with your comment they may start to research it, in the UK we call it a whitewash and the theory at the time if I remember was that it had been originally spread and contracted by the cattle through contaminated feed so it's original source?.

There is also a theory that after we sent billions of pounds (Sterling) of cattle to the incinerator the ashes were then packed up and sold as fertilizer by the company that did the incinerating and shipped around the world which of course potentially left the prions still active within the ash and meaning that the fertilizer could itself spark new outbreaks in whatever country it was sold as fertilizer if cattle came into contact with it.

I was under the impression that BSE was caused by protein spikes in the brain.....

Which Somerset? We have one in Cali too.

a reply to: visitedbythem

Protein spikes eehh?

...

Was cow vaxxed or unvaxxed? Republican or Dem? With the price of beef the cow shouldn’t be mad.

I apologize, just needed a little humor for a change

a reply to: astra001uk

EU Plant
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a reply to: astra001uk

We should get Professor Neil Ferguson to create some reliable computer models which indicate the only course of action is culling the entire bovine population.

And for that reason, I am prohibited from donating blood here in the US.
If you were living in the UK between certain dates in the 80s (I was born and raised there..born in 80) then here in the US you're banned from giving blood, just in the tiny minute case, you might have CJD.

If I recall, this disease is caused by feeding cows other cows to eat. Right? I remember there was a big deal about it in the news back in the 90's I think. Pretty disgusting really if you ask me.

ETA:

I did a google serach on my question and this pulled up:

Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE), or commonly known as the Mad Cow Disease, is the result of feeding cows with blood, bone, and other unwanted flesh from all types of farmed animals that are probably infected. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, BSE spread within the United Kingdom and then to other countries through the practice of using rendered bovine origin proteins as an ingredient in cow feed.

However, the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) published a final regulation that prohibits such practice in 1997. According to the FDA, it is illegal to use most of the mammalian protein in the production of animal feeds to ruminant animals, including cows, sheep and goats. In 2008, the FDA strengthened the rule by forbidding the use of the highest risk cattle tissues in all animal feed, not only limited to ruminant animals feed. These regulations reduce the risk of the spread of BSE within the United States. (link to the FDA rules and regulations)

In Power Steer, a long article published on New York Times in 2002, the author Michael Pollan gave a personal account of the modern day beef practices, in which the feedlots are permitted to use non-ruminant animal protein as feed to cows. Example of non-ruminant animal protein includes feather meal from chickens. Since the bovine meat and bone meal is now being fed to chickens, pigs and fish instead of cattle, infectious prions could still reach the end of cattle if cattle are eating non-ruminant animal protein from these animals. As a result, cows might be still eating dead cows, just indirectly. Since statistics also suggest that 10 percent of the animal flesh and bone meal is fed to cows now, cows in the United States are also eating other dead animals, shifting this species from herbivore to carnivore.

The New York Times article Power Steer is worth reading and can be accessed here.

Sources:

Mad Cow Disease. (n.d.). Retrieved November 20, 2014, from www.peta.org...

Mad Cow Found in California … Because Cows Are Being Fed Blood, Animal Parts and Feces. (2012, April 26). Retrieved November 20, 2014, from www.washingtonsblog.com...

U.S. Food and Drug Administration. (2014, September 17). Retrieved November 20, 2014, from www.fda.gov...

Title 21 – Food and Drugs. U.S. Government Printing Office. (2014, April 1). Retrieved November 20, 2014, from www.gpo.gov...

Jacobson, B. (2013, December 12). You won’t believe the crap (literally) that factory farms feed to cattle. Retrieved November 21, 2014, from archive.onearth.org...

blogs.commons.georgetown.edu...

It is just not moral to feed farm animals like cows other farm animals (in this report it makes mention of cows, sheep, and goats.) It seems like this is a man-made problem caused by unethical feeding of farm animals.

This is why cannibalism is bad, prion diseases.

To visitedbythem Its Summerset UK So hopefully, you are safe in the USA

I remember reading similar reasoning at the time of the BSE crisis Sadly like so often with these things i doubt we will ever find the truth sadly

reply to: Marlborough Red