From: Tony Williams 

This is all deja-vu for me. So far the news coverage is like a rerun of how
it was in the UK a few years back. The next step will be mad cat disease
which will at least make people take a bit more notice of what goes into
pet food.

--
Tony

Randall Parker wrote:
> Nobel Prize winning prion expert Stanley Prusiner says all cattle should
> be tested for prions.
>
> But if prions are so common in cows and are a threat to humans then why
> aren't they causing more human disease? Or is there about to be a human
> outbreak in the US after gestation time from infections that started in
> the mid 90s? But even if so have feed practices now so reduced the risk
> of new infections that there is no point in testing?
>
> If current cow feeding practices are still a threat then doesn't a
> change in feeding practices make more sense than widespread testing? Why
> should cattle become a permanent threat to health as carriers of
> dangerous prions if they didn't used to be a threat in the past when
> human prion disease was rare?
>
> http://nytimes.com/2003/12/25/national/25WARN.html?pagewanted=2
>    Excerpt:
> Early this fall, Japanese surveillance found two new cases of the
> disease in young animals, aged 21 and 23 months. "Under no testing
> regime except Japan would these cases ever be found," he said.
>
> Randall Parker wrote:
>
>
>> It would be interesting to know the rate at which Japanese tests find
>> the disease.
>>
>

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