Mac Cow, Sane Protests
MAD COW, SANE PROTESTS: Global Dangers of the Shallow U.S. Beef Regulatory Regime;
A Korean Way Forward
Time to update our science and public policy
A Korean Way Forward
Time to update our science and public policy
MAD COW, SANE PROTESTS: Global Dangers of the Shallow U.S. Beef Regulatory Regime; A Korean Way Forward
Time to update our science and public policy to:
1. test every neurological patent with an autopsy when they die (to catch misdiagnoses of Alzheimer's and other neurological problems--that may be CJD/mad cow in humans)
2. test every cow for BSE. (The USA tests much less than 1% of its beef cattle. U.S. beef producer Creekstone Farms wants to test all cattle for consumer health, though the USDA has banned Creekstone from testing its own property! Court suit rages on this issue right now. Some market economy there, USDA...refusing to give the consumer what it wants. No wonder that many countries ban US beef.)
In conclusion, there is little security when dealing with prion diseases other than to get serious and collect the data. In the USA, this has not been done on #1 or #2. Without that data, people are just talking without substance about mad cow and USA beef. The USDA claims "no evidence of mad cow." No! All the USDA can claim is no evidence GATHERED at all of anything. It's corporate science, tobacco science's crimes get an update with false 'beef science' of the USDA and large producers. The supply-sided, revolving door, anti-consumer regulatory structure in the USA is to blame not the Korean protestors calling attention to the irrationality of trusting this less than 1% testing regime of the USDA with their (and globally, our) long term health.
[from the Korea Times]
Mad Cow, Sane Protests: Dangers of the Shallow U.S. Beef Regulatory Regime; A Korean Way Forward Should be Based on Consumer Choice and Highly Regulated Public Health
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It is astounding to me that discussion I have read about the Korean anti-mad cow protests revolves airlessly around "who's rational or irrational" instead anyone adding something empirical to the debate yet. I would like to try to do that with an analysis of the shallow U.S. beef regulatory regime that has gotten us into this situation of mistrust in the first place.
I comment on two themes in Mike Breen's Korea Times letter "Protestors Want a Better President" though they are hardly themes limited to his editorial. They are two themes I see as unquestioned across many editorials and government pronouncements that make me uncomfortable.
So I want to address what I think are two interlocking misperceptions about these protests. There is a commonly repeated misperception that the protests are irrational on two levels: some argue that they are irrational as a general democratic strategy; others argue that the protests are irrational because U.S. beef is known to be safe, they say. This is intertwined with the second issue: what is the true status of U.S. beef? Is it safe? Who do you trust?
To address this, I look at the U.S. beef regulatory regime's record in the past several years. After I talk about that, in the conclusion I will make a few general comments about the history of how democratic social movements can play an important role as an independent form of rational redress of grievances against an unrepresentative and irrational government policy. If we support democracy or markets, we are forced to address these protests seriously.
My first point is to agree with Michael Breen and many others: the protests have turned into a large anti-Lee protest over his many policies. The first 100 days did show very clearly his leadership style as hardly different from his Bulldozer epithet hurled at him from his mayorship of Seoul. This has become more than a beef import issue. It has become a widespread systemic critique of the leadership style and a critique of the policy substance of the Lee Presidency. Food is a particularly central area that allowed this social movement to congeal.
Food--particularly beef--is a politically sensitive issue because its symbolism is connected to a shared identity across a very politically divided Korea. Food became a mobilizer of cross-class concern, cross-generational concern, and cross-gender concern.
We all eat regardless of what our politics are. Food concern helped to frame and to catalyze the wider general discontent with the Lee Presidency that has seen his approval rating drop to merely 17% in 100 days.
However, the protest's touchstone was hardly irrational opposition to U.S. beef. Let's diplomatically call it a healthy skepticism. After all, the U.S. beef producers shipped in risk materials of beef several years ago that were banned in Korea, to pad their profits and endanger Korean health. They damaged their own reputation in Korea and should take responsibility for catalyzing this issue. Second, probably a lot of Americans--and many others worldwide--have been killed due to American beef/CJD. It may have been classified as Alzheimer's (that is exploding in the USA) instead of CJD. There are few autopsies after Alzheimer's diagnoses/deaths--truly to differentiate whether it really was Alzheimer's or CJD. From the data we have, there have been some misdiagnoses made (for autopsy-verified CJD once misdiagnosed as Alzheimer's, or the difficulties logically or politically of collecting this data in the USA, see the Neurology 1997 paper at the link
).
My second point is that the meat lobby is very powerful in the USA. I assume they made the Alabama 2006 mad cow 'disappear' in a second test. No one asked how this was possible to do so, when they seem to trust a negative result more readily in the first test than a positive one? They never do a second test on a negative result. This indicates that they consider the first tests very unreliable--only if it yields a positive result! How do we know that more of the first tests are not 'false negatives' instead of the USDA's claim of 'false positives'? More information about the Alabama 2006 mad cow:
.
My third point is that there is a large 'revolving door' between U.S. food regulation and corporations that make the food standards. This encourages corrupt forms of regulation instead of independent regimes of regulation. The point is why trust them when they lie so much about nearly everything under the sun. Remember that just a few months ago in February 2008, the USA had its largest beef recall ever--around 143 million pounds--because a beef producer, Hallmark, had been caught by the U.S. Humane Society on secret video. The U.S. beef processor, secretly and illegally, was processing at-risk 'downer' cattle even though such practices were banned because they are more likely to transmit BSE into human food. Much of this tainted downer cow beef had already been eaten--by schoolchildren.
In other words, the claim that Korean schoolchildren are acting irrationally over U.S. beef can be brushed aside. On the contrary, the dangers are very real: eating downer cow processed meat happened to schoolchildren in the USA only months ago! More on this massive beef recall in February 2008 is found at the following link. It occurred right before the USA tries to argue that it's beef is 'safe' for Korean markets. As I said, this was the largest beef recall ever in the USA and much of it had already been eaten before the problem was discovered. ( ).
You might argue that the secret video caught the only perpetrator. However, we don't have the data to prove that assertion because U.S. beef is not thoroughly tested. Besides, we should not have to depend upon random secret videos about corrupt practices in beef processing in the USA to get the USA to clean up its act. We should have a regulatory regime in the USA that works to provide consumer-wanted beef without massive media exposures that only then force them to address consumers internationally. Korea is not the only country in the world to mistrust USA beef for various rationales, you know. Join the club.
My fourth point is connected with the third point about the large revolving door. There is a lack of true regulation in the beef industry to catch mad cow when it is there. A regime of regulation has been set that only tests less than 1% of US cattle for mad cow: one-tenth of one percent actually (.01%). The USDA is scaling that back as well to even less! Now, this means that when they do (accidentally) find a mad cow, like in Alabama in 2006, it can't be scientifically called an "isolated" case of mad cow. First, there is no such thing as an isolated case of BSE since the disease vectors to get it are social or in the shared feed. It can come from the same feed that other cattle are eating, though those many other cattle remain untested, in the scientific dark. Second, it can only be called an isolated case if we have data from all USA cattle for mad cow. We don't have that data--and from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) point of view they don't want to ever create such data for world consumers. The USDA is hostile to setting up a regulatory regime for creating this data.
Data about USA mad cow prevalence (based on knowing about all cows and we don't have that data) currently available is not grounds for arguing USA beef safety. It's this lack of data that the USDA argues proves something. However, it doesn't prove lack of mad cow. It's just proves lack of testing data. If we don't test a lot of cows, we don't find much mad cow. It's that simple. And when we do we 'retest' after finding mad cow, we call the original test a 'false positive' and say everything is fine. Is it? This 'less than 1% testing' and then burying the evidence when we find it is the recipe for labeling U.S. beef safe? Such is the perverse illogic that animates the U.S. "regulatory" system for beef. I would not bet my long term mental health on this trust--without verification that a more rational testing regime for mad cow is in place. I could not ask Koreans (or anyone for that matter--because USA beef is a global issue) to trust this strange regulatory regime around beef in the USA. It is a regulatory regime full of holes.
The systemic things I have discussed in this short letter are social proof of problems with the U.S. regulatory apparatus around beef. Therefore, I don't think characterization of protesters as irrational is accurate, and I don't think that we have the data to show that the U.S. beef imports will be safe particularly given attempts to ship illegal 'special risk materials' into Korea before.
Don't blame Koreans for protesting. Don't blame the potential victims. Blame the USA for ruining its own reputation with Korean consumers, with a list of past untrustworthy actions. The USA should take responsibility for its past inactions and work to make a better regulatory regime around beef. This would require banning the development of factory farms for animals that are an environmental, public, and animal health disaster, as well as instituting a much more thorough beef testing for BSE on the Japanese model of testing every cow.
When the USA makes a trusted product, there will be no problem and Koreans will enjoy eating American beef. When the USA doesn't make a trusted product, why blame Koreans for calling attention to it when the emperor has no clothes?
It remains to be seen whether the May 2008 attempt in the USA to ban downer cattle (again...it was already banned!) really has administrative pressure, or it is just a symbolic statement hoping to placate the public while it was in the news due to the undercover reporting of the U.S. Humane Society that showed illegal downer cattle being forklifted into the 'healthy' line for processing... (Watch two minutes of U.S. media presentation on this: "Undercover Video Shows Abuse Of Sick Cows", )
How do we get all the data on the USA mad cows. We test all USA cattle. It's that simple. This is an issue of global health that Korean protests have called attention to. Create a trusted product and everyone will want to buy it. However, the USDA has banned a U.S. beef supplier (Creekstone Farms) from creating a trusted product, banned them from testing all their own cattle like the Japanese consumers want. Creekstone wants to sell its beef to the Japanese that have a much better regulatory regime than the USA for catching BSE. The Japanese test all their beef cattle. Watch the Creekstone farms court suit against the USDA to understand the underhanded politics of beef regulation in the USA.
In conclusion, currently in the USA a lack of testing and lack of data is utilized to argue falsely there is 'no proof' of mad cow. They are right--there is intentionally no data to argue with one way or the other. For the USDA no data gathered equals no proof of mad cow? Hardly. A lack of data is proof of nothing--except perhaps a cover up.
The only way for the USA to assure the world it has safe beef is to test every cow like the Japanese already do. If the USA believes in open markets, listen to the Korean consumers instead of insulting their intelligence. If the USA doesn't believe in markets, it will attempt to ignore the Korean consumers and push low-tested beef into Korean markets. However, none of it will sell, and the little that will sell could start a health scare in 10 years or so--given the long term incubation of CJD in humans.
Moreover, since 2005, other pathways of Mad Cow/BSE besides the spines and bones have been noted: human-to-human transmission has been noted as well. Science is always updated and partial. I suggest that a bit of humility goes a long way for all of us toward expanding understanding of this complicated issue. Multiple pathways are involved in BSE/CJD transmission--more pathways than the regulatory people want to talk about in these disease vectors.
A nice summary of the strange U.S. (non)regulatory regime around beef is here, particularly in the last section of this article:
Many other areas of the world refuse U.S. beef on other grounds--because of humanly-active growth hormones. ( )
I suggest that USA could sell a lot more beef with more corporate humility. Listen to the Korean consumer. This could go a long way toward winning global consumer confidence.
In conclusion, my only concern about my title of 'Mad Cow, Sane Protests' is that the reader might romanticize that I think protests are the only way forward. On the contrary, a sane democracy has multiple routes for redressing grievances not exclusively limited to street protests. That so many have taken to the streets is not a sign of irrationality of the street protests. It is a sign millions were fed up with the irrationality of the Lee Presidency's decisions. It is a sign that Koreans are very concerned enough to protest this durably. They want to make their health and food policies more consumer rational, instead of only supply-side streamlined and irrational (where what is really irrational is a concern by Lee of only short term economic interests of kowtowing to Bush in a trade deal that sold out his own country's long term public health and threatens Korean sovereignty over its public health by his actions).
I think the widespread critiques in these protests show that Koreans want real statesmen to serve their long term health, ecological, and economic interests in policy that keep local Korean jurisdictions over these areas. A sustainable government would listen to the long term interests of the people to support local food security for Korean beef producers (consumers are not the only ones protesting the Blue House) as well as Korean consumers' health. This is a good policy change since hitching the Korean food economy to an international commodity market bubble is a bad idea. An unsustainable government policy would be to continue to do nothing: to continue to encourage the undercutting of Korean local food security in the face of domestic mass protests and global rising commodity prices. Lee should recognize that the global economic price regime assumptions of his previous '747' plan of economic expansion have changed out from under him and require a different method of approach now. Different more sustainable policies should be considered that grows the economy of Korea without undercutting local food and public health security.
I hope Korean activists, citizens, and the elected government understand that they are on the same side in the long run. I hope the USA continues to work harder on making its beef more trusted by concrete regulation inside the USA instead of merely propaganda campaigns mounted against consumers outside the USA. Reform yourself, U.S. beef producers, and people will rush to buy your beef.
So I don't think that the protests are irrational given real health scares about U.S. beef in the past several years--in Korea and in the USA. These are connected I would argue to the low-testing and low-monitoring rates of the U.S. regulatory system around beef. The protests are a welcome injection of civic rationality into an airless irrational debate that failed to take into account long term issues of Korean producer economics and consumer health.
In general since the beginnings of nation-state democracy several hundred years ago, social movements have played a crucial role in redressing power inequalities and making a more representative society. However, the danger on all sides now is that catalyzing events may further polarize Korean politics without leading to a potential resolution. "Containerizing" the Korean protests with shipping containers on the streets of Seoul is not a sign of trust that Lee has heard anything so far. So this outcome right now of increased hostility can hardly be the fault of the protests since what we are dealing with is an open-ended interaction between intransigent state inactions and protest actions. Lee's decisions--really his intransigence that he is not listening--has led him to create his own crisis. He has contributed in a major way to this outcome instead of the protests alone. The protests became massive only after a month of smaller protests when he had his Agricultural Minister merely announce the same policy about U.S. beef. I wish him well for restabalizing Korean democracy with more tangible policy changes than those of his first 100 days. Removing the shipping containers from the streets would be a sign of good faith that he is listening. Keeping the shipping containers on the streets will spell for all to see a complete political paralysis of Korea for his entire administration. And Korea requires good, clear leadership now to address the domestic protests and strikes as well as the international price hikes from the speculative bubbles in basic commodities.
With all this in play, this protest dynamic can have unpredictable outcomes since the crowds carry different bases of critique and increasingly counter-opposition parades against the original parades/protests. I hope multiple routes to address grievances for resolution of this issue are kept open.
Optimistically, I think it was very smart of the Lee Presidency not to countersue opposition party leaders over lawsuits filed at the Constitutional Court to stop the beef importation issue on health grounds. I think Lee understands they have to work together on this issue now.
However, the real pink elephant in the room is the U.S. regulatory regime--the issue no one talks about. This issue is at the heart of both the safety of the American beef as well as the question about who is irrational and rational in the protests.
I hope the Korean people--and the Korean government--take the time to analyze different regulatory regimes around the world as they make informed decisions about the long term security of their food and their health.
If we live in a globalized world of trade like the neoliberals say, then the government should respect the consumers' will to choose.
If we live in a democracy like the media says, then the government should respect the citizens' massive concern for health as an overlooked issue.
I suggest to President Lee that combining a respect for both consumer choice and high standards of public regulatory health are the obvious basis of a commonly supported policy that can restabalize Korean politics. Uncouple the trade deal from the beef issue. Apologize if you have to, though think about the stability of your country as the more important domestic issue than the protection of the extra 5% of beef profits that the U.S. beef packers wanted for shipping meat over 30 months into Korea. If the USA wants to trade, it will grumble, though it will trade since greed is stronger than hurt pride. I hope the Lee Presidency makes the correct decision in supporting these two policies. It definitely means renegotiation of the irrational U.S. beef importation standards that are in place at present (however symbolically they are attempting to get around saying that openly). Do that: instant stabilization though not instant popularity. A window of opportunity of rational, peaceful decisions is closing in my opinion particularly with solidarity strikes in transportation. Best of luck. The right decisions exist, though no one can force you to take them except yourself.
Regards,
Mark Whitaker
Author, Toward A Bioregional State
Commentary:
quote from Korea Times editorial comments: "But I missed any mention of a surge in youthful or middle-aged Alzheimers??"
As I said "Science is always updated and partial. I suggest that a bit of humility goes a long way for all of us toward expanding understanding of this complicated issue." First, CJD is pretty rare.
So tests aren't done very often for it instead of simply reaching for another test and another label.
Second, we don't have all the data for what you claim to argue with confidence in those age groups. It would have to be gathered by autopsies because CJD tests like brain wave tests can be misleading.
Look, this was known over ten years ago. Nothing I said was new.
Besides, CJD in the UK had a history of being misdiagnosed as "psychological problems", see below. The USA has a lot of kids in the past 15 years with the same easy diagnoses that are really well known characteristics of "Early warnings [of CJD]: insomnia, memory loss, depression, anxiety, withdrawal, fearfulness.." who are thrown into the lucrative category of "attention deficit disorder" where doctors love to give them expensive antidepressants and make a bit of money off it by labeling it a psychological problem.
If you follow the link you might have read about how only autopsies can tell for sure in differentiations between neurological diseases. Very few of these are ever done to doublecheck original medical diagnoses--much less original mere psychological diagnoses. When they do, they sometimes find they misdiagnose neurological diseases. No shock there.
Doctors can misdiagnose and miscategorize on neurological diseases. The autopsy evidence for this is on my side.
Besides,
"British Study Says Brain [CJD] Patients Had [Been Labelled Mere] Psychiatric Symptoms
By LAWRENCE K. ALTMAN ... April 5, 1996
Many of the 10 British patients afflicted with a new variant of a fatal brain disease possibly linked to mad-cow disease had behavioral and emotional changes that initially fooled doctors into thinking they had psychiatric disorders, according to the first published scientific report about the cases.
In nine of the patients, early symptoms included personality changes, depression, difficulty sleeping, withdrawal, fearfulness, and paranoia, said the report, being published on Saturday in The Lancet, an international journal issued in London. ****Several patients were referred by their doctors to a psychiatrist.*** [In the US, the doctors would call it "attention deficit disorder" and prescribe antidepressants and make some money out of it.]
The doctors were also fooled because brain wave tracings of [some of the CJD] patients did not show the changes that are usually observed in traditional cases of the human brain disease, known as Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease. [So, brain wave 'negative results for CJD' are not an accurate test anymore if ever they were.]
The findings were reported to alert doctors to ***the unusual new face of a rare disease.***
Creuzfeldt-Jakob Disease itself is so rare that physicians find it hard to diagnose. [and the data gathering of autopsies of all dead or suicide teens is rarely done to test for CJD. This is why I talk about having data humility. You argue with me as if you or I have all the data to make assertions like yours with confidence! We don't. No country in the world does-yet. It’s mad cow in the dark.]
The report was also intended to alert doctors to the distinctive pattern of waxy deposits known as amyloid plaques that were found in the brain along with the usual holes that give the brain an appearance of Swiss cheese. "
Amyloid plaques? You know these plaques are thought to be an EXCLUSIVE sign of Alz in the popular press, though they occur in CJD so not true...
go wild look up amyloid plaques in both Alz and CJD:
It has been claimed that only people in their late 60's, 70's and 80's, etc suffer from Alzheimer's.
However, no, they are more likely to be DIAGNOSED with Alzheimer's. What you are diagnosed with and what you suffer from can be a big difference particularly with neurological problems. It's the level of misdiagnoses of neurological conditions and the miscategorizations and the distrust in brain wave 'tests' for CJD that are faulty; and the fact that the same amyloid plaques exist in Alz and CJD that we should be concerned about.
Autopsy evidence shows some misdiagnoses are possible in these conditions, however, the USA doesn't do the tests to really give us a real picture of autopsies. It would require a regulatory regime that requires an autoposy of death in ANY claimed neurological condition to get the data security you desire.
"In the UK, any elderly patient who has ataxia, depression, or dementia in the absence of clinical features of classical CJD is very unlikely to have an autopsy and to have the brain looked at by a neuropathologist with an interest in the diagnosis of neurodegenerative disease (using any techniques). An extremely small proportion of the at-risk population is being assessed by neuropathology. (Benbow and Benbow 1994; Benbow, Benbow et al. 1994) with each neuroscience centre performing an average of 8.8 autopsies on old age psychiatry patients each year (Benbow, Reid et al. 1995). The overall age-standardized (65 yrs) prevalence rates in the UK population for organic disorder is 4.7%, depressive illness 10.0% and neuroses 2.5% (Saunders, Copeland et al. 1993). With a neuroscience centre serving about 2.8 million population of all ages you can work out ***how small a proportion of the aged with a neurological disease have an autopsy [TO VERIFY any other neurological diagnoses were correct]. Autopsy rates are going down for a variety of reasons (Start et al 1993).****
If there was to be an increase in the incidence of nvCJD in the elderly then, based on established autopsy rates for patients with these types of clinical features, it is highly unlikely that it would be detected until it competed with the incidence of vascular disease, Alzheimer's disease or Lewy body disease. As CJD is such a rare disease you could have a large relative increase in its incidence, for example if there was to be BSE transmission, and still not detect it with established rates for neuropathological autopsies in this section of the population. I suspect that this is also the case in most other countries, however this is only a hunch as I have not looked for similar published evidence from the US or other countries.
The Medical Research Council and the Department of Health are at present implementing increased surveillance for the elderly population in the UK. It is a difficult thing to plan without very large resources for surveillance given the range of clinical features for nvCJD and their overlap with the established degenerative diseases of old age."
Feel safe?
Besides, let's remember that beef is not the only known transmission vector of CJD anymore.
"It's a frightening realization: not only is BSE -- the human equivalent of mad cow disease -- easily transmitted through blood transfusions, it can also strike patients previously thought to be immune to the disease. These findings reveal that a much wider portion of the world population is potentially susceptible to both BSE and mad cow disease, and with incubation times of ten years, it's virtually impossible to say who has BSE right now.
Another disturbing shocker: persons can carry BSE for years without showing any symptoms whatsoever. They may have no idea they're carrying the disease. And their blood can transmit it to others.
These findings are being described as revealing a "second phase" of BSE where the disease spreads from person to person rather than merely spreading from cattle to humans...."
So youth could have it without typical symptoms because of the long incubation time it is said. This was known four years ago. Time to update our science and public policy to:
1. test every neurological patent with an autopsy when they die as well as
2. test every cow for BSE. (Like U.S. beef producer Creekstone Farms wants to do, though the USDA has banned it from testing its own property! Some market economy there, USDA...refusing to give the consumer what it wants.)
In conclusion, There is little security when dealing with prion diseases other than to get serious and collect the data. In the USA, this has not been done on #1 or #2.
Without that data, everything is just talk without substance about mad cow and USA beef. The USDA claims "no evidence of mad cow." No, all they can claim is no evidence at all of anything. Without that data, people are just talking without substance about mad cow and USA beef. The USDA claims "no evidence of mad cow." No! All the USDA can claim is no evidence GATHERED at all of anything. It's corporate science, tobacco science's crimes get an update with false 'beef science' of the USDA and large producers.
The supply-sided, revolving door, anti-consumer regulatory structure in the USA is to blame. Don't blame the Korean protestors calling attention to the irrationality of trusting this system with their long term health.Thanks for the information. I'm glad to hear it. However, when you look into this program, the so called "monitoring" you quoted is not monitoring. It is entirely an optional and voluntary program.
"Are we required to have an autopsy conducted in cases of suspected CJD?
Currently, we are not aware of any state that requires autopsy in cases of suspected CJD."
That was my point on two levels: no required autopsies are there; and no required autopsies means they miss misdiagnoses of neurological problems potentially between Alzheimer's and CJD which have very similar brain evidence physical effects and neurological symptoms.
You said:
"On a routine basis, CDC reviews the national multiple cause-of-death data taken from death certificates and compiled by the National Center for Health Statistics, CDC."
In addition, with the support of the Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists, CDC conducts follow-up review of clinical and neuropathology records of CJD decedents aged
Another issue is the transmission through particular contaminated soil types--particularly connected potentially to heavily manganese soils. Though the organophosphates/chemical pesticides lobby doesn't want the scientists to look into that data because they make a lot of money and don't want it challenged with this terrible scientific proof that these chemical pesticides are a huge causal factor in BSE transmission. This is little known so I quote it at length here:
Mark Purdey's Organophosphate Model of Mad Cow Disease
Mount Horeb, Wisconsin [Posted 3 January 2003, last updated November 2004]
Among mainstream science, the current model of Mad Cow Disease (Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy or BSE) involves "prions" -- protein rods allegedly without any DNA of their own, and an ability to survive most antiseptics and heat while remaining infectious. Mad Cow Disease is found in a number of other animals, and is called:
Mad Cow Disease (BSE - Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy) in cattle,
CJD (Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease) in humans,
Scrapie in sheep, and
CWD (Chroinc Wasting Disease) in deer and elk.
In 2002-03, CWD was a hot news topic. Deer and elk in the area of Mount Horeb, Wisconsin, were eradicated in a brutal and controversial government-sponsored shooting spree. The mass kill-off was allegedly designed to stop the spread of CWD to other herds, but was widely attacked as a public relations ploy, useful for little else than trying to convince hunters in Wisconsin that the wild meat supply was safe and covering up the true causes of the disease.
The infectious "prion" model of these diseases claims that prions found in diseased animals are then transmitted to other animals through rendered animal products in their feed. The prions in animal feed then go on to infect many animals who consume that feed. At least that's the official line in the U.S. and Great Britain. However, at the height of the Mad Cow epidemic in England, an organic farmer's personal observations led him to a different conclusion.
Mark Purdey and the Organophosphate model of Mad Cow Disease
Somerset farmer Mark Purdey observed that the UK's Mad Cow outbreak immediately followed the government's attempt to eradicate the parasite warble fly from cattle. Most farmers were required ***to [DIRECTLY] treat their cows' spines and skulls with Phosmet, an organophosphate pesticide.*** Because Purdey was an organic farmer, he obtained special permission to avoid treating his cattle. He then observed that his neighbors' treated herds went on to contract Mad Cow Disease (BSE), whereas Purdey's untreated herds did not. Purdey also had purchased a non-organic herd which had been treated with Phosmet before he acquired it. That particular herd also went on to develop Mad Cow Disease.
"Cambridge University prion biochemist, David R. Brown is dismissive of the science behind the infectious model of BSE. He terms it 'a very limited amount of science by a few assumed-reputable scientists.' He insists there is 'no evidence an infectious agent is present in either meat or milk.' " (Fintan Dunne, "Organophosphates Implicated In Mad Cow Disease")
Unfortunately, Purdey was unable to interest Britain's government or scientific community in this theory, so he proceeded to study the problem himself. Using his own money and some donations by private indivduals, Purdey funded private research and came up with the following theory:
1.) Prions are naturally-occurring proteins, involved in protecting tissues (such as the eyes) from harmful UV radiation.
2.) When exposed to both organophosphates and manganese, prions change from copper-tipped to manganese-tipped, and cause a chain reaction of prions switching to manganese "tips". (The organophosphate may serve as a chelating agent or catalyst.) Manganese-tipped prions are virtually indestructible, surviving disinfectants, autoclaves, and incineration. [They get back into the soil and cause another vector of contamination that way for BSE.]
3.) These chain reactions cause periods of high oxidation which burn through tissues, as evidenced by the sponge-like brains found in Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy. (Spongiform is pronounced "SPONGE-i-form", because the brain will eventually resemble a sponge from so many holes.) Sometimes consuming the flesh, eggs, or milk of an infected animal can cause the disease, especially if the animal was consumed when a prion chain reaction was occurring. However, prion diseases ***are much less likely to be contracted from infected animal products than from organophosphate exposure coupled with available manganese.*** [IN OTHER WORDS, ORGANIC, GRASS-FED BEEF WOULD AVOID THIS ROUTE OF HYPER-CONTAMINATION, if this can be further tested.]
4.) High-manganese, low-copper environments can create prion diseases without the organophosphate catalyst, as seen in deer and elk herds in Colorado who eat manganese-rich pine needles.
Purdey's theory is corroborated by field data and lab tests funded with his limited resources. However, all such data is completely ignored by the UK and US governments, ***largely because politicians receive sizable campaign contributions from both GMO and organophosphate producers.***
***Liability of organophosphate producers would be astronomical if Purdey's theory were accepted as the true cause of prion diseases.*** [So it's not widely talked about, because corporate scientists would lose their jobs, and we pretend these patterns don't exist. There are lots of operative threats in the corporate and governmental science community to not do 'too much' health motivated research. We keep pretending that the emperor is wearing clothes and is protecting us, though the emperor is not wearing any clothes.]
In the case of Wisconsin, Purdey's soil samples showed a natural high-manganese, low-copper content in the CWD/Mount Horeb area. Further evidence of high manganese soil can be seen underground a few miles from Mount Horeb, in Blue Mounds, Wisconsin. Cave of the Mounds has a number of purple and black formations which they'll tell you are colored by manganese leached from the soil above. In contrast, Kickapoo Indian Caverns in Western Wisconsin has no CWD in the area, and the cave has patches of blue-green copper-rich areas on its walls, indicating the copper-rich soil above.
If Purdey's theory is correct, organophosphate pesticides and herbicides are of particular interest to [non-organic] vegetarians. This would put [non-organic] vegetarians at risk for contracting a prion disease from foods treated with organophosphate pesticides and/or herbicides. Of particular interest are soy products, specifically Roundup-Ready soybeans.
Roundup-ready soy is a GMO (genetically modified organism, a/k/a "Franken-food") specifically developed to tolerate higher levels of Roundup herbicide. Farmers who grow Roundup-ready soy are required by contract to use Roundup herbicide on their soy fields. ***[Monsanto's] Roundup is in the glyphosate class of herbicides, a type of organophosphate.*** I drove to Mount Horeb, a small town only two hours away from my mother's home in Wisconsin, and asked some of the locals if soy is grown in the area. The answer was yes, but I really didn't have to ask -- I could see the soy fields myself. How much of that soy is Roundup-ready? I haven't been able to obtain this information specifically on Mount Horeb, but there is plenty of information verifying that Roundup-ready soy is commonly grown on Wisconsin farms.
***"A lobby group that includes Bayer, Monsanto, Novartis, Pfizer, Roche and Schering-Plough was behind the effort to discredit Purdey***...[In other words, they know its true: organophosphates seem to be a catalyst*** of BSE transmission in certain soil conditions.] Purdey has been consistently denied even exploratory funding to extend his privately supported research. Yet the Purdey/Brown ***chemical poisoning model matches with the epidemiological spread of CJD clusters in humans.*** ***It also predicts the incidence of BSE-type diseases in animals. The accepted infectious model fits neither."*** (Fintan Dunne, "Insecticide Causes Mad Cow Disease")
It's obvious that deer and elk in the Mount Horeb area are eating from local [organophosphate] soy fields [and then the mad deer go on to eat manganese-rich pine needles, ergo, BSE magnesium tipped protein conversion, it seems, according to this demonstrated model]. If any of that soy is Roundup-ready [organophosphates], the high-manganese soil [or the deer later eating pine needles with it] would provide the requisite manganese to produce CWD. And unlike humans, deer and elk don't remove soybeans from their pods or rinse them off prior to eating. In other words, they're getting the full dose of Roundup, a type of organophosphate. This would explain an outbreak of CWD in the soy-growing area of Mount Horeb.
Dr. Lawrence Broxmeyer, an expert in the class of TB bacteria, claims that Bovine tuberculosis may be the actual culprit behind Britain's Mad Cow outbreak. However, when asked about the organophosphate model, he admitted that organophosphates are one of several chemical agents which could have made the cattle more susceptible to the disease.
Avoiding organophosphates
Prion diseases are considered to be fatal in all animals. They vary in which part of the nervous system is attacked, and how long the organism will be able to survive after infection. Often the human form of prion disease, CJD, is misdiagnosed as Alzheimer's Disease, Dementia, MS, or other nervous disorders.
Steps can be taken to avoid CJD. To ensure that soy [or anything] is NOT treated with Roundup, use only CERTIFIED ORGANIC [anything including] soy and soy products. Soybeans treated with organophosphates, or GMO soybeans, cannot be certified as organic. Also, all animal products should be avoided, as the infectious nature of the disease is occasionally manifested (as with hunters infected from eating diseased prey). According to Purdey, the disease is infectious when prions are causing active chain reactions, but there is no way to visibly ascertain whether prion chain reactions were occurring when the animal was slaughtered.
"I shudder further when I see the bottles of OP head lice shampoo and OP [orthophosphate] systemics for pets and gardens still in the shops for human use." (Mark Purdey, "Myths & Truths About Mad Cow Disease")
Another source of organophosphates are lice, flea, and tick shampoos. This includes lice shampoos distributed by public schools. Read the label of any such product provided to your child or purchased, and check its active ingredients with your pharmacist. An internet search can also help -- in a good search engine like Google.com, type the word "organophosphate", followed by a space and then the active ingredient. Seeking natural remedies, such as neem and turmeric (see "The Green Pharmacy" by James Duke, Ph.D.), are a good way of circumventing possible organophosphates.
Finally, if farming or gardening, avoid organophosphate pesticides and herbicides. Research the products you use, then find alternatives or switch to organic farming/gardening methods. Farm workers who can't influence their employers could look into wearing protective gear, or even finding a job with a better employer.
More information
The following links provide information on the history of Purdey's research, the science linking prion diseases with organophosphates, and the difficulty Purdey and others have encountered while trying to inform the public of this horrendous connection:
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How does the CDC address these several issues? THEY DON'T. THEY IGNORE IT.
They are caught in a limited paradigm that doesn't require CJD autopsies, and that only monitors one of the many known disease vectors of CJD with their expection that it "has to be" only in the old age groups.
This limited monitoring program of the CDC no longer applies to the known multiple vectors of this prion disease (additionally human-to-human regardless of age and potentially through certain contaminated soils).
So, I suggest caution. Look behind the CDC boilerplate that claims everything is OK. Everything is not OK, and entirely voluntary and limited paradigm monitoring on that single transmission expectation is all they do--when you look into it.
Besides, you attempted to change the subject. The CDC is not a testing agency for American beef, unless you call the American sheeple beef. CDC can only go with the existing voluntary human data, and there is none gathered systemically about neurological disease autopsies in general.
You said:
"In particular the absence of no noted surge in youthful dementia (a key marker of BSE-related deaths in Britain), is explained away as having been overlooked due to lack of vigilance and ambiguity of symptoms."
The key is your word 'noted.' That can easily be brushed aside as something I already addressed in the main article. There has been a noted surge in the general mental problems in the past 20 years for young adults, though it has been classified as something else potentially: "mere psychological problems" on the rise, 'attention deficit disorder' (a lucrative pharmacological diagnosis). In general as I noted above these same psychological problems are on the rise are known as many precursors of CJD in its less active stage. Even the Brits mistook CJD many times for mere 'psychological problems' a decade ago. So, given the surge of mental problems in the USA as of late, which granted could have many causes, there is no evidence yet to justify ambivalence about this CJD issue of miscategorization because all neurological patients are not autopsied regularly after death (much less to check to see if Alzheimer's or other difficulties were correctly identified in the first place.)
If you want to change the subject from testing beef to asking the real American medical experts on prion diseases, they are on my side. They want more U.S. testing definitely of American beef:
Medical experts would rather see more testing. If the U.S. is testing to reassure consumers and overseas buyers that BSE is rare in the US, then the fewer we test, the fewer cases are found, says Richard T. Johnson, MD, prof. of neurology, microbiology, and neuroscience at Johns Hopkins University & Bloomberg School of Public Health. Johnson chaired the 12-member committee that wrote the 2004 Institute of Medicine report, Advancing Prion Science: Guidance for the National Prion Research Program.
That's the very person involved with the CDC organization you cited. EVEN HE WANTS MORE BEEF TESTING. He is not satisfied with U.S. beef testing, nor should you be.
If you want to get back on track and ask agricultural policy expert people in the USDA, they say that only testing and tracking every cow can really help pinpoint the dangers.
"The only sure way to know the age of a beef animal [for current regulation by age] is to have a birth certificate for each and every single animal. Since beef production in the United States means large herds spread over wide geographic areas, that [profit-draining, consumer desired testing] is not [done]."--Dr. J.B. Penn, 2004, Under-Sec. of Agriculture for farm and foreign agricultural services
It was Lee's fault for the economic stalemate, instead of the protests.
President Lee blew it by giving public health away, by accepting the American trade bullying strategy to force U.S. beef without conditions into Korea as a condition for any other trade agreement. Lee should never have accepted these standards as an infringement of Korean sovereignty and health policies in place. He should have said, er, as President who cares about the long term health of my people, the US and Korea could conduct a trade agreement without linking it to Korea giving up the rights to set have health conditions on U.S. beef. However, he was overly anxious:
"It was the new Korean government after all that bungled the original negotiation in its haste to give some big present to Seoul's biggest ally....
"According to Agweb, a U.S. agricultural site, the U.S. beef exporters originally called for a gradual approach to the Korean market by starting with the shipment of beef from younger cattle and expanding to older ones. It was the U.S. Trade Representative office's ``all-or-nothing'' brinkmanship, however, that brought Washington [with Lee's quick agreement so he could meet Bush with a beef agreement already done as a gift to Bush] what seemed to be a great trade victory at first but has turned into the biggest bone of contention now.
"So it seems symbolically important enough that the two government's top trade negotiators who signed the bilateral free trade agreement have to untangle the beef issue, one of the preconditions for the trade pact. They must find a compromise, or the two countries could lose too much, not just economically but in other areas as well."
Some of the recent deal is this:
"The Bush administration suggested one solution that it encourages beef exports to label the beef with the age of butchered cattle, so Korean consumers have information on the meat they purchase, while Koreans hope the additional negotiations will find a way to keep the country from importing meat from animals above 30 months old.Major U.S. beef exporters have said they would abide by the policy if enacted."
Yeah, though read the following quote once more. There is no real way to verify animal age in the USA right now. It's an empty promise. A label is just a piece of paper right now.
"The only sure way to know the age of a beef animal [for current regulation by age or this suggestion] is to have a birth certificate for each and every single animal. Since beef production in the United States means large herds spread over wide geographic areas, that [profit-draining, consumer desired testing] is not [done]."--Dr. J.B. Penn, 2004, Under-Sec. of Agriculture for farm and foreign agricultural services
So the 'solution' proposed of 'labelling age' (snicker snicker, will they fall for it?) is just an unverified number, without the tracking and monitoring system of every cow.
The issue is more general: why trust any government without proof? Why are you so thoughtless and deluded? Show us the full data of all cows tested, and all neurological autopsies tested, then we have the only basis for starting a rational conversation based on data. Test more cattle not less: prion experts want it. Agronimists say tracking all cattle is the only way to verify age. You can't talk science without data and my article was to call attention to this glaring omission on these two counts. The emperor truly is wearing no clothes.
Until then, the USDA are the actual panderers to the mob. The real definition of the mob is the Mafia--a small, criminal, powerful, wealthy elite who don't care about your health who make money by cheating you or bullying you.
The USDA is going backwards, not forwards on this issue:
The USDA devotes just 2 percent of its $75 billion budget and 2 percent of its 100,000 staff to “enhance protection and safety of the nation’s agriculture and food supply” according to its web site. Thirty-five percent of its budget goes to “enhance economic opportunities for agricultural producers” and 14 percent to “support increased economic opportunities and improved quality of life in rural America.” In other words, it's main job is a glorified sales agency and sales advertiser for U.S. beef and not a health monitoring program.
The USDA announced in July 2006 that it would REDUCE testing for mad cow disease by 90 percent, to about 110 tests per day.
Listen to the experts on prion diseases. Listen to the U.S. agricultural experts. And most of all, listen to the legitimate concerns of consumers worldwide. Koreans are not the only ones to mistrust current U.S. beef regulatory regimes. If the U.S. sells safer and more documented beef, there would be no problem. It is good for them to do so in the long run in a globalized trading economy. It is good for all countries to do so. The 'race to the top' in regulation standards instead of the race to the bottom will be the most successful trading arrangement because it will be based on trust in getting rid of mad cow when it is there, instead of just slapping on an empty label in the scientific dark.
A way forward is more rigorous testing that will help all of us, even you, who I fight for your right to eat safe food as well.
Time to update our science and public policy to:
1. test every neurological patent with an autopsy when they die (to catch misdiagnoses of Alzheimer's and other neurological problems--that may be CJD/mad cow in humans)
2. test every cow for BSE. (The USA tests much less than 1% of its beef cattle. U.S. beef producer Creekstone Farms wants to test all cattle for consumer health, though the USDA has banned Creekstone from testing its own property! Court suit rages on this issue right now. Some market economy there, USDA...refusing to give the consumer what it wants. No wonder that many countries ban US beef.)
In conclusion, there is little security when dealing with prion diseases other than to get serious and collect the data. In the USA, this has not been done on #1 or #2. Without that data, people are just talking without substance about mad cow and USA beef. The USDA claims "no evidence of mad cow." No! All the USDA can claim is no evidence GATHERED at all of anything. It's corporate science, tobacco science's crimes get an update with false 'beef science' of the USDA and large producers. The supply-sided, revolving door, anti-consumer regulatory structure in the USA is to blame not the Korean protestors calling attention to the irrationality of trusting this less than 1% testing regime of the USDA with their (and globally, our) long term health.
[from the Korea Times]
Mad Cow, Sane Protests: Dangers of the Shallow U.S. Beef Regulatory Regime; A Korean Way Forward Should be Based on Consumer Choice and Highly Regulated Public Health
====
It is astounding to me that discussion I have read about the Korean anti-mad cow protests revolves airlessly around "who's rational or irrational" instead anyone adding something empirical to the debate yet. I would like to try to do that with an analysis of the shallow U.S. beef regulatory regime that has gotten us into this situation of mistrust in the first place.
I comment on two themes in Mike Breen's Korea Times letter "Protestors Want a Better President" though they are hardly themes limited to his editorial. They are two themes I see as unquestioned across many editorials and government pronouncements that make me uncomfortable.
So I want to address what I think are two interlocking misperceptions about these protests. There is a commonly repeated misperception that the protests are irrational on two levels: some argue that they are irrational as a general democratic strategy; others argue that the protests are irrational because U.S. beef is known to be safe, they say. This is intertwined with the second issue: what is the true status of U.S. beef? Is it safe? Who do you trust?
To address this, I look at the U.S. beef regulatory regime's record in the past several years. After I talk about that, in the conclusion I will make a few general comments about the history of how democratic social movements can play an important role as an independent form of rational redress of grievances against an unrepresentative and irrational government policy. If we support democracy or markets, we are forced to address these protests seriously.
My first point is to agree with Michael Breen and many others: the protests have turned into a large anti-Lee protest over his many policies. The first 100 days did show very clearly his leadership style as hardly different from his Bulldozer epithet hurled at him from his mayorship of Seoul. This has become more than a beef import issue. It has become a widespread systemic critique of the leadership style and a critique of the policy substance of the Lee Presidency. Food is a particularly central area that allowed this social movement to congeal.
Food--particularly beef--is a politically sensitive issue because its symbolism is connected to a shared identity across a very politically divided Korea. Food became a mobilizer of cross-class concern, cross-generational concern, and cross-gender concern.
We all eat regardless of what our politics are. Food concern helped to frame and to catalyze the wider general discontent with the Lee Presidency that has seen his approval rating drop to merely 17% in 100 days.
However, the protest's touchstone was hardly irrational opposition to U.S. beef. Let's diplomatically call it a healthy skepticism. After all, the U.S. beef producers shipped in risk materials of beef several years ago that were banned in Korea, to pad their profits and endanger Korean health. They damaged their own reputation in Korea and should take responsibility for catalyzing this issue. Second, probably a lot of Americans--and many others worldwide--have been killed due to American beef/CJD. It may have been classified as Alzheimer's (that is exploding in the USA) instead of CJD. There are few autopsies after Alzheimer's diagnoses/deaths--truly to differentiate whether it really was Alzheimer's or CJD. From the data we have, there have been some misdiagnoses made (for autopsy-verified CJD once misdiagnosed as Alzheimer's, or the difficulties logically or politically of collecting this data in the USA, see the Neurology 1997 paper at the link
).
My second point is that the meat lobby is very powerful in the USA. I assume they made the Alabama 2006 mad cow 'disappear' in a second test. No one asked how this was possible to do so, when they seem to trust a negative result more readily in the first test than a positive one? They never do a second test on a negative result. This indicates that they consider the first tests very unreliable--only if it yields a positive result! How do we know that more of the first tests are not 'false negatives' instead of the USDA's claim of 'false positives'? More information about the Alabama 2006 mad cow:
.
My third point is that there is a large 'revolving door' between U.S. food regulation and corporations that make the food standards. This encourages corrupt forms of regulation instead of independent regimes of regulation. The point is why trust them when they lie so much about nearly everything under the sun. Remember that just a few months ago in February 2008, the USA had its largest beef recall ever--around 143 million pounds--because a beef producer, Hallmark, had been caught by the U.S. Humane Society on secret video. The U.S. beef processor, secretly and illegally, was processing at-risk 'downer' cattle even though such practices were banned because they are more likely to transmit BSE into human food. Much of this tainted downer cow beef had already been eaten--by schoolchildren.
In other words, the claim that Korean schoolchildren are acting irrationally over U.S. beef can be brushed aside. On the contrary, the dangers are very real: eating downer cow processed meat happened to schoolchildren in the USA only months ago! More on this massive beef recall in February 2008 is found at the following link. It occurred right before the USA tries to argue that it's beef is 'safe' for Korean markets. As I said, this was the largest beef recall ever in the USA and much of it had already been eaten before the problem was discovered. ( ).
You might argue that the secret video caught the only perpetrator. However, we don't have the data to prove that assertion because U.S. beef is not thoroughly tested. Besides, we should not have to depend upon random secret videos about corrupt practices in beef processing in the USA to get the USA to clean up its act. We should have a regulatory regime in the USA that works to provide consumer-wanted beef without massive media exposures that only then force them to address consumers internationally. Korea is not the only country in the world to mistrust USA beef for various rationales, you know. Join the club.
My fourth point is connected with the third point about the large revolving door. There is a lack of true regulation in the beef industry to catch mad cow when it is there. A regime of regulation has been set that only tests less than 1% of US cattle for mad cow: one-tenth of one percent actually (.01%). The USDA is scaling that back as well to even less! Now, this means that when they do (accidentally) find a mad cow, like in Alabama in 2006, it can't be scientifically called an "isolated" case of mad cow. First, there is no such thing as an isolated case of BSE since the disease vectors to get it are social or in the shared feed. It can come from the same feed that other cattle are eating, though those many other cattle remain untested, in the scientific dark. Second, it can only be called an isolated case if we have data from all USA cattle for mad cow. We don't have that data--and from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) point of view they don't want to ever create such data for world consumers. The USDA is hostile to setting up a regulatory regime for creating this data.
Data about USA mad cow prevalence (based on knowing about all cows and we don't have that data) currently available is not grounds for arguing USA beef safety. It's this lack of data that the USDA argues proves something. However, it doesn't prove lack of mad cow. It's just proves lack of testing data. If we don't test a lot of cows, we don't find much mad cow. It's that simple. And when we do we 'retest' after finding mad cow, we call the original test a 'false positive' and say everything is fine. Is it? This 'less than 1% testing' and then burying the evidence when we find it is the recipe for labeling U.S. beef safe? Such is the perverse illogic that animates the U.S. "regulatory" system for beef. I would not bet my long term mental health on this trust--without verification that a more rational testing regime for mad cow is in place. I could not ask Koreans (or anyone for that matter--because USA beef is a global issue) to trust this strange regulatory regime around beef in the USA. It is a regulatory regime full of holes.
The systemic things I have discussed in this short letter are social proof of problems with the U.S. regulatory apparatus around beef. Therefore, I don't think characterization of protesters as irrational is accurate, and I don't think that we have the data to show that the U.S. beef imports will be safe particularly given attempts to ship illegal 'special risk materials' into Korea before.
Don't blame Koreans for protesting. Don't blame the potential victims. Blame the USA for ruining its own reputation with Korean consumers, with a list of past untrustworthy actions. The USA should take responsibility for its past inactions and work to make a better regulatory regime around beef. This would require banning the development of factory farms for animals that are an environmental, public, and animal health disaster, as well as instituting a much more thorough beef testing for BSE on the Japanese model of testing every cow.
When the USA makes a trusted product, there will be no problem and Koreans will enjoy eating American beef. When the USA doesn't make a trusted product, why blame Koreans for calling attention to it when the emperor has no clothes?
It remains to be seen whether the May 2008 attempt in the USA to ban downer cattle (again...it was already banned!) really has administrative pressure, or it is just a symbolic statement hoping to placate the public while it was in the news due to the undercover reporting of the U.S. Humane Society that showed illegal downer cattle being forklifted into the 'healthy' line for processing... (Watch two minutes of U.S. media presentation on this: "Undercover Video Shows Abuse Of Sick Cows", )
How do we get all the data on the USA mad cows. We test all USA cattle. It's that simple. This is an issue of global health that Korean protests have called attention to. Create a trusted product and everyone will want to buy it. However, the USDA has banned a U.S. beef supplier (Creekstone Farms) from creating a trusted product, banned them from testing all their own cattle like the Japanese consumers want. Creekstone wants to sell its beef to the Japanese that have a much better regulatory regime than the USA for catching BSE. The Japanese test all their beef cattle. Watch the Creekstone farms court suit against the USDA to understand the underhanded politics of beef regulation in the USA.
In conclusion, currently in the USA a lack of testing and lack of data is utilized to argue falsely there is 'no proof' of mad cow. They are right--there is intentionally no data to argue with one way or the other. For the USDA no data gathered equals no proof of mad cow? Hardly. A lack of data is proof of nothing--except perhaps a cover up.
The only way for the USA to assure the world it has safe beef is to test every cow like the Japanese already do. If the USA believes in open markets, listen to the Korean consumers instead of insulting their intelligence. If the USA doesn't believe in markets, it will attempt to ignore the Korean consumers and push low-tested beef into Korean markets. However, none of it will sell, and the little that will sell could start a health scare in 10 years or so--given the long term incubation of CJD in humans.
Moreover, since 2005, other pathways of Mad Cow/BSE besides the spines and bones have been noted: human-to-human transmission has been noted as well. Science is always updated and partial. I suggest that a bit of humility goes a long way for all of us toward expanding understanding of this complicated issue. Multiple pathways are involved in BSE/CJD transmission--more pathways than the regulatory people want to talk about in these disease vectors.
A nice summary of the strange U.S. (non)regulatory regime around beef is here, particularly in the last section of this article:
Many other areas of the world refuse U.S. beef on other grounds--because of humanly-active growth hormones. ( )
I suggest that USA could sell a lot more beef with more corporate humility. Listen to the Korean consumer. This could go a long way toward winning global consumer confidence.
In conclusion, my only concern about my title of 'Mad Cow, Sane Protests' is that the reader might romanticize that I think protests are the only way forward. On the contrary, a sane democracy has multiple routes for redressing grievances not exclusively limited to street protests. That so many have taken to the streets is not a sign of irrationality of the street protests. It is a sign millions were fed up with the irrationality of the Lee Presidency's decisions. It is a sign that Koreans are very concerned enough to protest this durably. They want to make their health and food policies more consumer rational, instead of only supply-side streamlined and irrational (where what is really irrational is a concern by Lee of only short term economic interests of kowtowing to Bush in a trade deal that sold out his own country's long term public health and threatens Korean sovereignty over its public health by his actions).
I think the widespread critiques in these protests show that Koreans want real statesmen to serve their long term health, ecological, and economic interests in policy that keep local Korean jurisdictions over these areas. A sustainable government would listen to the long term interests of the people to support local food security for Korean beef producers (consumers are not the only ones protesting the Blue House) as well as Korean consumers' health. This is a good policy change since hitching the Korean food economy to an international commodity market bubble is a bad idea. An unsustainable government policy would be to continue to do nothing: to continue to encourage the undercutting of Korean local food security in the face of domestic mass protests and global rising commodity prices. Lee should recognize that the global economic price regime assumptions of his previous '747' plan of economic expansion have changed out from under him and require a different method of approach now. Different more sustainable policies should be considered that grows the economy of Korea without undercutting local food and public health security.
I hope Korean activists, citizens, and the elected government understand that they are on the same side in the long run. I hope the USA continues to work harder on making its beef more trusted by concrete regulation inside the USA instead of merely propaganda campaigns mounted against consumers outside the USA. Reform yourself, U.S. beef producers, and people will rush to buy your beef.
So I don't think that the protests are irrational given real health scares about U.S. beef in the past several years--in Korea and in the USA. These are connected I would argue to the low-testing and low-monitoring rates of the U.S. regulatory system around beef. The protests are a welcome injection of civic rationality into an airless irrational debate that failed to take into account long term issues of Korean producer economics and consumer health.
In general since the beginnings of nation-state democracy several hundred years ago, social movements have played a crucial role in redressing power inequalities and making a more representative society. However, the danger on all sides now is that catalyzing events may further polarize Korean politics without leading to a potential resolution. "Containerizing" the Korean protests with shipping containers on the streets of Seoul is not a sign of trust that Lee has heard anything so far. So this outcome right now of increased hostility can hardly be the fault of the protests since what we are dealing with is an open-ended interaction between intransigent state inactions and protest actions. Lee's decisions--really his intransigence that he is not listening--has led him to create his own crisis. He has contributed in a major way to this outcome instead of the protests alone. The protests became massive only after a month of smaller protests when he had his Agricultural Minister merely announce the same policy about U.S. beef. I wish him well for restabalizing Korean democracy with more tangible policy changes than those of his first 100 days. Removing the shipping containers from the streets would be a sign of good faith that he is listening. Keeping the shipping containers on the streets will spell for all to see a complete political paralysis of Korea for his entire administration. And Korea requires good, clear leadership now to address the domestic protests and strikes as well as the international price hikes from the speculative bubbles in basic commodities.
With all this in play, this protest dynamic can have unpredictable outcomes since the crowds carry different bases of critique and increasingly counter-opposition parades against the original parades/protests. I hope multiple routes to address grievances for resolution of this issue are kept open.
Optimistically, I think it was very smart of the Lee Presidency not to countersue opposition party leaders over lawsuits filed at the Constitutional Court to stop the beef importation issue on health grounds. I think Lee understands they have to work together on this issue now.
However, the real pink elephant in the room is the U.S. regulatory regime--the issue no one talks about. This issue is at the heart of both the safety of the American beef as well as the question about who is irrational and rational in the protests.
I hope the Korean people--and the Korean government--take the time to analyze different regulatory regimes around the world as they make informed decisions about the long term security of their food and their health.
If we live in a globalized world of trade like the neoliberals say, then the government should respect the consumers' will to choose.
If we live in a democracy like the media says, then the government should respect the citizens' massive concern for health as an overlooked issue.
I suggest to President Lee that combining a respect for both consumer choice and high standards of public regulatory health are the obvious basis of a commonly supported policy that can restabalize Korean politics. Uncouple the trade deal from the beef issue. Apologize if you have to, though think about the stability of your country as the more important domestic issue than the protection of the extra 5% of beef profits that the U.S. beef packers wanted for shipping meat over 30 months into Korea. If the USA wants to trade, it will grumble, though it will trade since greed is stronger than hurt pride. I hope the Lee Presidency makes the correct decision in supporting these two policies. It definitely means renegotiation of the irrational U.S. beef importation standards that are in place at present (however symbolically they are attempting to get around saying that openly). Do that: instant stabilization though not instant popularity. A window of opportunity of rational, peaceful decisions is closing in my opinion particularly with solidarity strikes in transportation. Best of luck. The right decisions exist, though no one can force you to take them except yourself.
Regards,
Mark Whitaker
Author, Toward A Bioregional State
Commentary:
quote from Korea Times editorial comments: "But I missed any mention of a surge in youthful or middle-aged Alzheimers??"
As I said "Science is always updated and partial. I suggest that a bit of humility goes a long way for all of us toward expanding understanding of this complicated issue." First, CJD is pretty rare.
So tests aren't done very often for it instead of simply reaching for another test and another label.
Second, we don't have all the data for what you claim to argue with confidence in those age groups. It would have to be gathered by autopsies because CJD tests like brain wave tests can be misleading.
Look, this was known over ten years ago. Nothing I said was new.
Besides, CJD in the UK had a history of being misdiagnosed as "psychological problems", see below. The USA has a lot of kids in the past 15 years with the same easy diagnoses that are really well known characteristics of "Early warnings [of CJD]: insomnia, memory loss, depression, anxiety, withdrawal, fearfulness.." who are thrown into the lucrative category of "attention deficit disorder" where doctors love to give them expensive antidepressants and make a bit of money off it by labeling it a psychological problem.
If you follow the link you might have read about how only autopsies can tell for sure in differentiations between neurological diseases. Very few of these are ever done to doublecheck original medical diagnoses--much less original mere psychological diagnoses. When they do, they sometimes find they misdiagnose neurological diseases. No shock there.
Doctors can misdiagnose and miscategorize on neurological diseases. The autopsy evidence for this is on my side.
Besides,
"British Study Says Brain [CJD] Patients Had [Been Labelled Mere] Psychiatric Symptoms
By LAWRENCE K. ALTMAN ... April 5, 1996
Many of the 10 British patients afflicted with a new variant of a fatal brain disease possibly linked to mad-cow disease had behavioral and emotional changes that initially fooled doctors into thinking they had psychiatric disorders, according to the first published scientific report about the cases.
In nine of the patients, early symptoms included personality changes, depression, difficulty sleeping, withdrawal, fearfulness, and paranoia, said the report, being published on Saturday in The Lancet, an international journal issued in London. ****Several patients were referred by their doctors to a psychiatrist.*** [In the US, the doctors would call it "attention deficit disorder" and prescribe antidepressants and make some money out of it.]
The doctors were also fooled because brain wave tracings of [some of the CJD] patients did not show the changes that are usually observed in traditional cases of the human brain disease, known as Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease. [So, brain wave 'negative results for CJD' are not an accurate test anymore if ever they were.]
The findings were reported to alert doctors to ***the unusual new face of a rare disease.***
Creuzfeldt-Jakob Disease itself is so rare that physicians find it hard to diagnose. [and the data gathering of autopsies of all dead or suicide teens is rarely done to test for CJD. This is why I talk about having data humility. You argue with me as if you or I have all the data to make assertions like yours with confidence! We don't. No country in the world does-yet. It’s mad cow in the dark.]
The report was also intended to alert doctors to the distinctive pattern of waxy deposits known as amyloid plaques that were found in the brain along with the usual holes that give the brain an appearance of Swiss cheese. "
Amyloid plaques? You know these plaques are thought to be an EXCLUSIVE sign of Alz in the popular press, though they occur in CJD so not true...
go wild look up amyloid plaques in both Alz and CJD:
It has been claimed that only people in their late 60's, 70's and 80's, etc suffer from Alzheimer's.
However, no, they are more likely to be DIAGNOSED with Alzheimer's. What you are diagnosed with and what you suffer from can be a big difference particularly with neurological problems. It's the level of misdiagnoses of neurological conditions and the miscategorizations and the distrust in brain wave 'tests' for CJD that are faulty; and the fact that the same amyloid plaques exist in Alz and CJD that we should be concerned about.
Autopsy evidence shows some misdiagnoses are possible in these conditions, however, the USA doesn't do the tests to really give us a real picture of autopsies. It would require a regulatory regime that requires an autoposy of death in ANY claimed neurological condition to get the data security you desire.
"In the UK, any elderly patient who has ataxia, depression, or dementia in the absence of clinical features of classical CJD is very unlikely to have an autopsy and to have the brain looked at by a neuropathologist with an interest in the diagnosis of neurodegenerative disease (using any techniques). An extremely small proportion of the at-risk population is being assessed by neuropathology. (Benbow and Benbow 1994; Benbow, Benbow et al. 1994) with each neuroscience centre performing an average of 8.8 autopsies on old age psychiatry patients each year (Benbow, Reid et al. 1995). The overall age-standardized (65 yrs) prevalence rates in the UK population for organic disorder is 4.7%, depressive illness 10.0% and neuroses 2.5% (Saunders, Copeland et al. 1993). With a neuroscience centre serving about 2.8 million population of all ages you can work out ***how small a proportion of the aged with a neurological disease have an autopsy [TO VERIFY any other neurological diagnoses were correct]. Autopsy rates are going down for a variety of reasons (Start et al 1993).****
If there was to be an increase in the incidence of nvCJD in the elderly then, based on established autopsy rates for patients with these types of clinical features, it is highly unlikely that it would be detected until it competed with the incidence of vascular disease, Alzheimer's disease or Lewy body disease. As CJD is such a rare disease you could have a large relative increase in its incidence, for example if there was to be BSE transmission, and still not detect it with established rates for neuropathological autopsies in this section of the population. I suspect that this is also the case in most other countries, however this is only a hunch as I have not looked for similar published evidence from the US or other countries.
The Medical Research Council and the Department of Health are at present implementing increased surveillance for the elderly population in the UK. It is a difficult thing to plan without very large resources for surveillance given the range of clinical features for nvCJD and their overlap with the established degenerative diseases of old age."
Feel safe?
Besides, let's remember that beef is not the only known transmission vector of CJD anymore.
"It's a frightening realization: not only is BSE -- the human equivalent of mad cow disease -- easily transmitted through blood transfusions, it can also strike patients previously thought to be immune to the disease. These findings reveal that a much wider portion of the world population is potentially susceptible to both BSE and mad cow disease, and with incubation times of ten years, it's virtually impossible to say who has BSE right now.
Another disturbing shocker: persons can carry BSE for years without showing any symptoms whatsoever. They may have no idea they're carrying the disease. And their blood can transmit it to others.
These findings are being described as revealing a "second phase" of BSE where the disease spreads from person to person rather than merely spreading from cattle to humans...."
So youth could have it without typical symptoms because of the long incubation time it is said. This was known four years ago. Time to update our science and public policy to:
1. test every neurological patent with an autopsy when they die as well as
2. test every cow for BSE. (Like U.S. beef producer Creekstone Farms wants to do, though the USDA has banned it from testing its own property! Some market economy there, USDA...refusing to give the consumer what it wants.)
In conclusion, There is little security when dealing with prion diseases other than to get serious and collect the data. In the USA, this has not been done on #1 or #2.
Without that data, everything is just talk without substance about mad cow and USA beef. The USDA claims "no evidence of mad cow." No, all they can claim is no evidence at all of anything. Without that data, people are just talking without substance about mad cow and USA beef. The USDA claims "no evidence of mad cow." No! All the USDA can claim is no evidence GATHERED at all of anything. It's corporate science, tobacco science's crimes get an update with false 'beef science' of the USDA and large producers.
The supply-sided, revolving door, anti-consumer regulatory structure in the USA is to blame. Don't blame the Korean protestors calling attention to the irrationality of trusting this system with their long term health.Thanks for the information. I'm glad to hear it. However, when you look into this program, the so called "monitoring" you quoted is not monitoring. It is entirely an optional and voluntary program.
"Are we required to have an autopsy conducted in cases of suspected CJD?
Currently, we are not aware of any state that requires autopsy in cases of suspected CJD."
That was my point on two levels: no required autopsies are there; and no required autopsies means they miss misdiagnoses of neurological problems potentially between Alzheimer's and CJD which have very similar brain evidence physical effects and neurological symptoms.
You said:
"On a routine basis, CDC reviews the national multiple cause-of-death data taken from death certificates and compiled by the National Center for Health Statistics, CDC."
In addition, with the support of the Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists, CDC conducts follow-up review of clinical and neuropathology records of CJD decedents aged
Another issue is the transmission through particular contaminated soil types--particularly connected potentially to heavily manganese soils. Though the organophosphates/chemical pesticides lobby doesn't want the scientists to look into that data because they make a lot of money and don't want it challenged with this terrible scientific proof that these chemical pesticides are a huge causal factor in BSE transmission. This is little known so I quote it at length here:
Mark Purdey's Organophosphate Model of Mad Cow Disease
Mount Horeb, Wisconsin [Posted 3 January 2003, last updated November 2004]
Among mainstream science, the current model of Mad Cow Disease (Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy or BSE) involves "prions" -- protein rods allegedly without any DNA of their own, and an ability to survive most antiseptics and heat while remaining infectious. Mad Cow Disease is found in a number of other animals, and is called:
Mad Cow Disease (BSE - Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy) in cattle,
CJD (Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease) in humans,
Scrapie in sheep, and
CWD (Chroinc Wasting Disease) in deer and elk.
In 2002-03, CWD was a hot news topic. Deer and elk in the area of Mount Horeb, Wisconsin, were eradicated in a brutal and controversial government-sponsored shooting spree. The mass kill-off was allegedly designed to stop the spread of CWD to other herds, but was widely attacked as a public relations ploy, useful for little else than trying to convince hunters in Wisconsin that the wild meat supply was safe and covering up the true causes of the disease.
The infectious "prion" model of these diseases claims that prions found in diseased animals are then transmitted to other animals through rendered animal products in their feed. The prions in animal feed then go on to infect many animals who consume that feed. At least that's the official line in the U.S. and Great Britain. However, at the height of the Mad Cow epidemic in England, an organic farmer's personal observations led him to a different conclusion.
Mark Purdey and the Organophosphate model of Mad Cow Disease
Somerset farmer Mark Purdey observed that the UK's Mad Cow outbreak immediately followed the government's attempt to eradicate the parasite warble fly from cattle. Most farmers were required ***to [DIRECTLY] treat their cows' spines and skulls with Phosmet, an organophosphate pesticide.*** Because Purdey was an organic farmer, he obtained special permission to avoid treating his cattle. He then observed that his neighbors' treated herds went on to contract Mad Cow Disease (BSE), whereas Purdey's untreated herds did not. Purdey also had purchased a non-organic herd which had been treated with Phosmet before he acquired it. That particular herd also went on to develop Mad Cow Disease.
"Cambridge University prion biochemist, David R. Brown is dismissive of the science behind the infectious model of BSE. He terms it 'a very limited amount of science by a few assumed-reputable scientists.' He insists there is 'no evidence an infectious agent is present in either meat or milk.' " (Fintan Dunne, "Organophosphates Implicated In Mad Cow Disease")
Unfortunately, Purdey was unable to interest Britain's government or scientific community in this theory, so he proceeded to study the problem himself. Using his own money and some donations by private indivduals, Purdey funded private research and came up with the following theory:
1.) Prions are naturally-occurring proteins, involved in protecting tissues (such as the eyes) from harmful UV radiation.
2.) When exposed to both organophosphates and manganese, prions change from copper-tipped to manganese-tipped, and cause a chain reaction of prions switching to manganese "tips". (The organophosphate may serve as a chelating agent or catalyst.) Manganese-tipped prions are virtually indestructible, surviving disinfectants, autoclaves, and incineration. [They get back into the soil and cause another vector of contamination that way for BSE.]
3.) These chain reactions cause periods of high oxidation which burn through tissues, as evidenced by the sponge-like brains found in Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy. (Spongiform is pronounced "SPONGE-i-form", because the brain will eventually resemble a sponge from so many holes.) Sometimes consuming the flesh, eggs, or milk of an infected animal can cause the disease, especially if the animal was consumed when a prion chain reaction was occurring. However, prion diseases ***are much less likely to be contracted from infected animal products than from organophosphate exposure coupled with available manganese.*** [IN OTHER WORDS, ORGANIC, GRASS-FED BEEF WOULD AVOID THIS ROUTE OF HYPER-CONTAMINATION, if this can be further tested.]
4.) High-manganese, low-copper environments can create prion diseases without the organophosphate catalyst, as seen in deer and elk herds in Colorado who eat manganese-rich pine needles.
Purdey's theory is corroborated by field data and lab tests funded with his limited resources. However, all such data is completely ignored by the UK and US governments, ***largely because politicians receive sizable campaign contributions from both GMO and organophosphate producers.***
***Liability of organophosphate producers would be astronomical if Purdey's theory were accepted as the true cause of prion diseases.*** [So it's not widely talked about, because corporate scientists would lose their jobs, and we pretend these patterns don't exist. There are lots of operative threats in the corporate and governmental science community to not do 'too much' health motivated research. We keep pretending that the emperor is wearing clothes and is protecting us, though the emperor is not wearing any clothes.]
In the case of Wisconsin, Purdey's soil samples showed a natural high-manganese, low-copper content in the CWD/Mount Horeb area. Further evidence of high manganese soil can be seen underground a few miles from Mount Horeb, in Blue Mounds, Wisconsin. Cave of the Mounds has a number of purple and black formations which they'll tell you are colored by manganese leached from the soil above. In contrast, Kickapoo Indian Caverns in Western Wisconsin has no CWD in the area, and the cave has patches of blue-green copper-rich areas on its walls, indicating the copper-rich soil above.
If Purdey's theory is correct, organophosphate pesticides and herbicides are of particular interest to [non-organic] vegetarians. This would put [non-organic] vegetarians at risk for contracting a prion disease from foods treated with organophosphate pesticides and/or herbicides. Of particular interest are soy products, specifically Roundup-Ready soybeans.
Roundup-ready soy is a GMO (genetically modified organism, a/k/a "Franken-food") specifically developed to tolerate higher levels of Roundup herbicide. Farmers who grow Roundup-ready soy are required by contract to use Roundup herbicide on their soy fields. ***[Monsanto's] Roundup is in the glyphosate class of herbicides, a type of organophosphate.*** I drove to Mount Horeb, a small town only two hours away from my mother's home in Wisconsin, and asked some of the locals if soy is grown in the area. The answer was yes, but I really didn't have to ask -- I could see the soy fields myself. How much of that soy is Roundup-ready? I haven't been able to obtain this information specifically on Mount Horeb, but there is plenty of information verifying that Roundup-ready soy is commonly grown on Wisconsin farms.
***"A lobby group that includes Bayer, Monsanto, Novartis, Pfizer, Roche and Schering-Plough was behind the effort to discredit Purdey***...[In other words, they know its true: organophosphates seem to be a catalyst*** of BSE transmission in certain soil conditions.] Purdey has been consistently denied even exploratory funding to extend his privately supported research. Yet the Purdey/Brown ***chemical poisoning model matches with the epidemiological spread of CJD clusters in humans.*** ***It also predicts the incidence of BSE-type diseases in animals. The accepted infectious model fits neither."*** (Fintan Dunne, "Insecticide Causes Mad Cow Disease")
It's obvious that deer and elk in the Mount Horeb area are eating from local [organophosphate] soy fields [and then the mad deer go on to eat manganese-rich pine needles, ergo, BSE magnesium tipped protein conversion, it seems, according to this demonstrated model]. If any of that soy is Roundup-ready [organophosphates], the high-manganese soil [or the deer later eating pine needles with it] would provide the requisite manganese to produce CWD. And unlike humans, deer and elk don't remove soybeans from their pods or rinse them off prior to eating. In other words, they're getting the full dose of Roundup, a type of organophosphate. This would explain an outbreak of CWD in the soy-growing area of Mount Horeb.
Dr. Lawrence Broxmeyer, an expert in the class of TB bacteria, claims that Bovine tuberculosis may be the actual culprit behind Britain's Mad Cow outbreak. However, when asked about the organophosphate model, he admitted that organophosphates are one of several chemical agents which could have made the cattle more susceptible to the disease.
Avoiding organophosphates
Prion diseases are considered to be fatal in all animals. They vary in which part of the nervous system is attacked, and how long the organism will be able to survive after infection. Often the human form of prion disease, CJD, is misdiagnosed as Alzheimer's Disease, Dementia, MS, or other nervous disorders.
Steps can be taken to avoid CJD. To ensure that soy [or anything] is NOT treated with Roundup, use only CERTIFIED ORGANIC [anything including] soy and soy products. Soybeans treated with organophosphates, or GMO soybeans, cannot be certified as organic. Also, all animal products should be avoided, as the infectious nature of the disease is occasionally manifested (as with hunters infected from eating diseased prey). According to Purdey, the disease is infectious when prions are causing active chain reactions, but there is no way to visibly ascertain whether prion chain reactions were occurring when the animal was slaughtered.
"I shudder further when I see the bottles of OP head lice shampoo and OP [orthophosphate] systemics for pets and gardens still in the shops for human use." (Mark Purdey, "Myths & Truths About Mad Cow Disease")
Another source of organophosphates are lice, flea, and tick shampoos. This includes lice shampoos distributed by public schools. Read the label of any such product provided to your child or purchased, and check its active ingredients with your pharmacist. An internet search can also help -- in a good search engine like Google.com, type the word "organophosphate", followed by a space and then the active ingredient. Seeking natural remedies, such as neem and turmeric (see "The Green Pharmacy" by James Duke, Ph.D.), are a good way of circumventing possible organophosphates.
Finally, if farming or gardening, avoid organophosphate pesticides and herbicides. Research the products you use, then find alternatives or switch to organic farming/gardening methods. Farm workers who can't influence their employers could look into wearing protective gear, or even finding a job with a better employer.
More information
The following links provide information on the history of Purdey's research, the science linking prion diseases with organophosphates, and the difficulty Purdey and others have encountered while trying to inform the public of this horrendous connection:
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How does the CDC address these several issues? THEY DON'T. THEY IGNORE IT.
They are caught in a limited paradigm that doesn't require CJD autopsies, and that only monitors one of the many known disease vectors of CJD with their expection that it "has to be" only in the old age groups.
This limited monitoring program of the CDC no longer applies to the known multiple vectors of this prion disease (additionally human-to-human regardless of age and potentially through certain contaminated soils).
So, I suggest caution. Look behind the CDC boilerplate that claims everything is OK. Everything is not OK, and entirely voluntary and limited paradigm monitoring on that single transmission expectation is all they do--when you look into it.
Besides, you attempted to change the subject. The CDC is not a testing agency for American beef, unless you call the American sheeple beef. CDC can only go with the existing voluntary human data, and there is none gathered systemically about neurological disease autopsies in general.
You said:
"In particular the absence of no noted surge in youthful dementia (a key marker of BSE-related deaths in Britain), is explained away as having been overlooked due to lack of vigilance and ambiguity of symptoms."
The key is your word 'noted.' That can easily be brushed aside as something I already addressed in the main article. There has been a noted surge in the general mental problems in the past 20 years for young adults, though it has been classified as something else potentially: "mere psychological problems" on the rise, 'attention deficit disorder' (a lucrative pharmacological diagnosis). In general as I noted above these same psychological problems are on the rise are known as many precursors of CJD in its less active stage. Even the Brits mistook CJD many times for mere 'psychological problems' a decade ago. So, given the surge of mental problems in the USA as of late, which granted could have many causes, there is no evidence yet to justify ambivalence about this CJD issue of miscategorization because all neurological patients are not autopsied regularly after death (much less to check to see if Alzheimer's or other difficulties were correctly identified in the first place.)
If you want to change the subject from testing beef to asking the real American medical experts on prion diseases, they are on my side. They want more U.S. testing definitely of American beef:
Medical experts would rather see more testing. If the U.S. is testing to reassure consumers and overseas buyers that BSE is rare in the US, then the fewer we test, the fewer cases are found, says Richard T. Johnson, MD, prof. of neurology, microbiology, and neuroscience at Johns Hopkins University & Bloomberg School of Public Health. Johnson chaired the 12-member committee that wrote the 2004 Institute of Medicine report, Advancing Prion Science: Guidance for the National Prion Research Program.
That's the very person involved with the CDC organization you cited. EVEN HE WANTS MORE BEEF TESTING. He is not satisfied with U.S. beef testing, nor should you be.
If you want to get back on track and ask agricultural policy expert people in the USDA, they say that only testing and tracking every cow can really help pinpoint the dangers.
"The only sure way to know the age of a beef animal [for current regulation by age] is to have a birth certificate for each and every single animal. Since beef production in the United States means large herds spread over wide geographic areas, that [profit-draining, consumer desired testing] is not [done]."--Dr. J.B. Penn, 2004, Under-Sec. of Agriculture for farm and foreign agricultural services
It was Lee's fault for the economic stalemate, instead of the protests.
President Lee blew it by giving public health away, by accepting the American trade bullying strategy to force U.S. beef without conditions into Korea as a condition for any other trade agreement. Lee should never have accepted these standards as an infringement of Korean sovereignty and health policies in place. He should have said, er, as President who cares about the long term health of my people, the US and Korea could conduct a trade agreement without linking it to Korea giving up the rights to set have health conditions on U.S. beef. However, he was overly anxious:
"It was the new Korean government after all that bungled the original negotiation in its haste to give some big present to Seoul's biggest ally....
"According to Agweb, a U.S. agricultural site, the U.S. beef exporters originally called for a gradual approach to the Korean market by starting with the shipment of beef from younger cattle and expanding to older ones. It was the U.S. Trade Representative office's ``all-or-nothing'' brinkmanship, however, that brought Washington [with Lee's quick agreement so he could meet Bush with a beef agreement already done as a gift to Bush] what seemed to be a great trade victory at first but has turned into the biggest bone of contention now.
"So it seems symbolically important enough that the two government's top trade negotiators who signed the bilateral free trade agreement have to untangle the beef issue, one of the preconditions for the trade pact. They must find a compromise, or the two countries could lose too much, not just economically but in other areas as well."
Some of the recent deal is this:
"The Bush administration suggested one solution that it encourages beef exports to label the beef with the age of butchered cattle, so Korean consumers have information on the meat they purchase, while Koreans hope the additional negotiations will find a way to keep the country from importing meat from animals above 30 months old.Major U.S. beef exporters have said they would abide by the policy if enacted."
Yeah, though read the following quote once more. There is no real way to verify animal age in the USA right now. It's an empty promise. A label is just a piece of paper right now.
"The only sure way to know the age of a beef animal [for current regulation by age or this suggestion] is to have a birth certificate for each and every single animal. Since beef production in the United States means large herds spread over wide geographic areas, that [profit-draining, consumer desired testing] is not [done]."--Dr. J.B. Penn, 2004, Under-Sec. of Agriculture for farm and foreign agricultural services
So the 'solution' proposed of 'labelling age' (snicker snicker, will they fall for it?) is just an unverified number, without the tracking and monitoring system of every cow.
The issue is more general: why trust any government without proof? Why are you so thoughtless and deluded? Show us the full data of all cows tested, and all neurological autopsies tested, then we have the only basis for starting a rational conversation based on data. Test more cattle not less: prion experts want it. Agronimists say tracking all cattle is the only way to verify age. You can't talk science without data and my article was to call attention to this glaring omission on these two counts. The emperor truly is wearing no clothes.
Until then, the USDA are the actual panderers to the mob. The real definition of the mob is the Mafia--a small, criminal, powerful, wealthy elite who don't care about your health who make money by cheating you or bullying you.
The USDA is going backwards, not forwards on this issue:
The USDA devotes just 2 percent of its $75 billion budget and 2 percent of its 100,000 staff to “enhance protection and safety of the nation’s agriculture and food supply” according to its web site. Thirty-five percent of its budget goes to “enhance economic opportunities for agricultural producers” and 14 percent to “support increased economic opportunities and improved quality of life in rural America.” In other words, it's main job is a glorified sales agency and sales advertiser for U.S. beef and not a health monitoring program.
The USDA announced in July 2006 that it would REDUCE testing for mad cow disease by 90 percent, to about 110 tests per day.
Listen to the experts on prion diseases. Listen to the U.S. agricultural experts. And most of all, listen to the legitimate concerns of consumers worldwide. Koreans are not the only ones to mistrust current U.S. beef regulatory regimes. If the U.S. sells safer and more documented beef, there would be no problem. It is good for them to do so in the long run in a globalized trading economy. It is good for all countries to do so. The 'race to the top' in regulation standards instead of the race to the bottom will be the most successful trading arrangement because it will be based on trust in getting rid of mad cow when it is there, instead of just slapping on an empty label in the scientific dark.
A way forward is more rigorous testing that will help all of us, even you, who I fight for your right to eat safe food as well.
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