OT farmed and dangerous

They are undoubtedly overreacting to scrapie. It is interesting though that it is so rare in Canada. I had assumed it was endemic everywhere that sheep are farmed (it was the fact that scrapie was common and did not jump the species barrier that made the UK complacent about BSE).

Looking at New Zealand with lots of sheep it is also rare there. It has been endemic in the UK for about 250 years and whilst it harms sheep and goats has never been considered a threat to human health.

BSE has more or less been eliminated although premature elimination of the testing facilities to save money may well allow a resurgence.

I don't mind unpasteurised cheese, but drinking unpasteurised milk is just asking for trouble with bovine TB and other milk borne infections.

Prions are bizarre.

Raw milk laws are a big issue here in Wisconsin, as you might imagine.

Tim

-- Deep Friar: a very philosophical monk. Website:

Raw milk does kill people now and then.

--

John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc

jlarkin at highlandtechnology dot com

Precision electronic instrumentation Picosecond-resolution Digital Delay and Pulse generators Custom laser drivers and controllers Photonics and fiberoptic TTL data links VME thermocouple, LVDT, synchro acquisition and simulation

A milk-borne infection might explain Jamie's cognitive deficits. There's no question that the bugs that can survive in unpasteurised milk can be healthy, and can thrive in the bodies of people who are silly enough to drink it.

question that the bugs that can survive in unpasteurised milk can be healthy, and can thrive in the bodies of people who are silly enough to drink it.

Talk about defication...

Jamie

They are in effect a form of artificial life infectious agent that occurs spontaneously in nature from time to time and exploits a niche that intensive farming has created. It is in essence a brain protein folded the wrong way that is a catalyst to make more copies of itself. The BSE infective agent proved to be remarkably resilient.

Enforced cannibalism of cows with the remains of earlier infected animals and a cavalier attitude towards the risk to the human food chain was responsible for allowing it to get out of hand in the UK. The weak point was later identified as lowering the length of time and processing temperature of animal feed rendering to save money. They really went overboard to put the junk into junk food and paid the price.

The MAFF argument was that it had been endemic in sheep for 250 years and had never apparently done anybody any harm... You can find photos of the hapless Mr Gummer force feeding his granddaughter a burger.

"Perfectly safe" gained a whole new meaning in the UK after Mad Cow disease became a major problem and young people started dying of it.

Wikipedia identifies her as his four-year-old daughter Cordelia

and your articles shows him tucking into the hamburger too.

Not many, but even one is too many.

Prions are bizarre.

That doesn't explain why countries that didn't use animal tissue in cattle feed also had relatively high levels of BSE. Although such animal feed were initially blamed there was a strong correlation with mineral deficiencies, and with organophosphates during pregnancy. Furthermore, the UK tested every likely anmal whereas other countries tested on a heard, and once determined there was an infection on one animal the whole heard was slaughtered, also removing other likely infected animals from the statistics. As a result the UK had seemingly much higher rates of infection.

I recall it well.

Nevertheless, the UK, with its systematic destruction of infected cattle, removal of dubious feeding practices and with an age limit of just 18 months for animals to be slaughtered now means the UK has probably the safest beef in the world.

Mmmm... do you put warm pus on your cereal too?

No I drink it straight.

cheers, Jamie

Raw milk's all fine and good if the cow's healthy. But it's a little chancy if you don't know the cow, or where she's been.

But, your choice, naturally, no one else's.

nd

I'm a little skeptical on that last point. Our PBS-TV had an CJD researcher who, IIRC, burned infected bones in a fire, buried the ashes in his garden, unearthed them two years later, and they were STILL infectious (as he proved by infecting some lab critters). (This was before they had a clue what the agent was.)

Prions are ugly. And their gas mileage isn't that much better than my Acura to boot.

Not entirely. We don't want him getting multiply-drug-resistant TB and givi ng it to all his neighbours.

That's one of the weaknesses of less-than-universal health care systems, no t that you will allow yourself to notice this.

No no, in that case all the neighbours can sue him. See - it's all good.

Actually, that's not right. They sue the farmer. Or the cows?

Yeah, well, except that the money disappears into the wrong pockets. If you have to spend, spend on health care. That's far better than to grease yet another lawyer.

Jeroen Belleman

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It's hard to see how cows would get MDR TB. In the U.S. MDRTB comes from addicts (with or without HIV), getting free care, feeling better and quitting treatment. Ironically, it's created as a result of free medical care.

Unless the cow's hanging in shooting galleries, she's probably cool. ;-)

MDRTB is serious business. My dad thought it much worse than HIV-- it's far more infectious, and easily spread.

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ent

Or just boil your milk.

I read recently that milk *protein* may be implicated in clogged arteries. Previously, *butterfat* was thought to be the culprit.

I haven't studied it in detail so it could be a big nothing-burger, but it dampened my enthusiasm for milk somewhat.