© McClatchy-Tribune
The form of BSE found was a 'rare variant' which The Washington Post reports is "not generally associated with an animal consuming infected feed." While unrelated to mad cow disease, there have been a number of mysterious viruses which have emerged this year including an incurable hand, foot and mouth disease strain (HFMD) in Vietnam which has already killed 19 children and a new mystery virus has resulted in the deaths of thousands of heads of livestock in Europe.
Similarly, an unidentified disease has killed over 20,000 chickens in Nepal and horses and cattle are dying in Maury County, Tennessee due to causes of death which "cannot be determined at this time."
Detective Terry Chandler of the Maury County Sheriff's Department said, "It is a mystery. We don't know what happened."
As previously mentioned these cases are not cases of BSE or linked in any way to the aforementioned California case as far as we know, however the sheer number of cases of mysterious diseases across the world over the past few months is odd indeed.
Please understand, I am not intending to draw spurious links for no reason, I am just pointing out that we are seeing a great deal of these strange deadly diseases spring up seemingly out of nowhere in locales across the globe.
For the first time since 2006, it has been announced that an American dairy cow in California has been found to be infected with mad cow disease, formally known as bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE).
The form of BSE found was a 'rare variant' which The Washington Post reports is "not generally associated with an animal consuming infected feed." While unrelated to mad cow disease, there have been a number of mysterious viruses which have emerged this year including an incurable hand, foot and mouth disease strain (HFMD) in Vietnam which has already killed 19 children and a new mystery virus has resulted in the deaths of thousands of heads of livestock in Europe.
Similarly, an unidentified disease has killed over 20,000 chickens in Nepal and horses and cattle are dying in Maury County, Tennessee due to causes of death which "cannot be determined at this time."
Detective Terry Chandler of the Maury County Sheriff's Department said, "It is a mystery. We don't know what happened."
As previously mentioned these cases are not cases of BSE or linked in any way to the aforementioned California case as far as we know, however the sheer number of cases of mysterious diseases across the world over the past few months is odd indeed.
Please understand, I am not intending to draw spurious links for no reason, I am just pointing out that we are seeing a great deal of these strange deadly diseases spring up seemingly out of nowhere in locales across the globe.
According to government officials, the animal was not slaughtered for food so they say it poses no danger to humans.
However, that hasn't reassured foreign nations like South Korea where one major retailer has already suspended sales of U.S. beef.
My guess is that they do not trust the word of U.S. government officials who have, over the years, proven themselves to be just about the most unreliable and untrustworthy people on earth.
After all, if we can't trust the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to tell our first responders they need to wear protective gear when saving peoples' lives, can we really trust our government to tell us when our food supply has been contaminated?
The federal government's collusion with Monsanto (which produces dangerous genetically modified seeds and equally dangerous pesticides) makes me think the answer is a clear no.
The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) - which oddly enough awarded a contract last year for 326,000 various rounds of ammunition - said that the infected cow never presented a risk to human health or our food supply.
The infected cow "was never presented for slaughter for human consumption, so at no time presented a risk to the food supply or human health," USDA chief veterinary officer John Clifford told reporters, according to Press TV.
"There is really no cause for alarm here with regard to this animal," he added.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) added that they have pledged to "work with the USDA to fully investigate the feed supply as part of the epidemiological investigation."
Keep in mind, this is the same FDA which allegedly spied on whistleblowers for revealing that the FDA approves products which are potentially incredibly dangerous and harmful.
Oddly, even though it has been reported that the atypical L-type BSE found in this cow is not generally associated with infected feed, according to experts consumption of infected feed is the only way cows can get the disease under natural conditions.
"In view of what we know about BSE after almost 20 years experience, contaminated feed has been the source of the epidemic," retired scientist from the National Institute of Neurological Diseases and Stroke Paul Brown told The Washington Post.
This is because BSE is, as far as we know, not caused by a microbe of any kind. Instead, it is caused by the prion protein of the brain being folded in an abnormal manner.
The prion protein is a normal constituent of tissues in the brain and elsewhere and if a disease variant of the protein enters the brain in one way or another, it can eventually cause all of the normal proteins to become misfolded as well.
Brown says that while it is theoretically possible for the disease to arise spontaneously, no such case has ever been recorded.
While the meat industry has used this case as an example of how rare BSE is and how the control measures in place work well, I see this as yet another case of a mysterious mutation of a virus or disease cropping up this year.
Hopefully the EPA, USDA, and FDA are all being truthful about the lack of danger posed by this, but honestly I don't trust them enough to risk it at this point.
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