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Hopefully it's controlled properly.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-north-east-orkney-shetland-45901043
Still have the images of the last breakout etched in my brain.
Hope not, you sensationalist headline writer you.
Cases crop up occasionally. No need for alarm (yet).
I did shudder when I read it on the BBC website.
I thought the BBC were talking about Westminster
Not really as new a thing as it sounds. The odd case crops up occasionally, this is the first in Scotland for a while though. It's not like it has suddenly mutated and we're going to get a new epidemic.
Main puzzle is how the infection got from 10 Downing St to Aberdeen in one jump.
I didn't know that the Bombay Stock Exchange had gone down?
Cool story time...
A few months back i got a call asking if i could step in and layout a magazine as their usual guy had taken unwell. I'd heard the guy was thought to have had a mini-stroke and if it was OK, would i do the next issue too as it'd be a while til he' be back to full health. Seems it wasn't a stoke and the guy had CJD. He died last month (a week after they correctly diagnosed him 🙁 )
*Northern Ireland not Scotland FWIW
I blame Brexit.
Cool story time…
Your definition of a cool story is certainly out of tune with mine.
Your definition of a cool story is certainly out of tune with mine.
I was thinking the same thing. I'd hate to hear what your un-cool stories are like.
After March 29th we'll be able to write our own rules and just push them into the food chain. I'm sure it'll be fine, after all nothing can wrong with things now can they?
Your definition of a cool story is certainly out of tune with mine.
There was a wee sad bake in my post - maybe you missed it (like the sarcism of the 'cool story time...') ?
Dammit last time they closed my local riding area 🙁
Poor cow.
Other countries will the put ban on exports again. Don’t blame them tbh,
Dammit last time they closed my local riding area
BSE or foot and mouth?
Other countries will the put ban on exports again. Don’t blame them tbh,
Unless it's shown to be more than an isolated case it would be the wrong thing to do.At this point they will have a full trace of every animal that cow has been on a farm with for it's life, where they are now etc. etc.
BSE doesn’t lead to CJD as was falsely claimed years ago. They are linked in so much as it’s organophosphate accumulation in fatty tissue that brings it on. Just the cattle get OPh through insect treatment and we get it through insecticides in vegetables.
My dad, a MinAg vet wrote a paper about it in the 90s. Was told to destroy it or lose his livelihood.
Oh, and the continental BSE rates were far higher than ours, however we somehow took the fall......
And a highly respected cancer biologist - "Peter Duesberg" once denied that AIDs was caused by HIV and still does.....
...….his former stature doesn't make him right.
And how many unreported cases?
@ray ban,
Apologies, you misunderstood me- wasn't clear perhaps. AIDS is effectively a series of symptoms produced by HIV in humans. CJD also affects humans, however BSE affects a different animal (bovine). They are equivalent and similar in cause, but one does not cause the other.
Hope that clears it up.
Are you saying BSE is organophosphate accumulation in fatty tissue or solely caused by it? It’s an accumulation of prion protein in the brain. How does you organophosphate accumulation explain kuru, scrapie or other prion diseases?
The current thinking is that vCJD is caused by eating BSE infected meat
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variant_Creutzfeldt%E2%80%93Jakob_disease#Cause
The organophosphate thing was discounted by the scientific community in the late 90s and early 2000s. There are papers on why.
Simply summary but also being pre-disposed to it in the first place - according to your link. It would then be interesting to see what the RoW figures are as meat was both exported and BSE was prevalent in many places outside the UK.
Can you explain for a simpleton, can I catch a lurgy by eating bse infected beef?
If not, why is bse in cows such a taboo?
Yeah you can, but if it caused symptoms in most people who did eat infected beef - tens of thousands of people would be dead by now. Instead a few hundred died, cases are dropping off - but around 1 in 2000 people are carriers of the disease. We aren't exactly sure why these people haven't developed vCJD - probably something something something....genetics....something something something.
but around 1 in 2000 people are carriers of the disease
And many less developed any kind of symptoms
Why the taboo? Its not properly understood, it broken out at a time when confidence in the sector was low - post Edwina and the eggs. The press went mad on it and the simplest thing from overseas was to stop exports and continue to dispose of dead animals in a hole without any further thought to it. Don't look for it, don't see it don't have to report it.
As I said up above every cow in the UK is tracked for its life. Down to it parents and off spring, which farms its been on and what medical treatments it's had. Isolation, tracking and investigation is much easier now.
From my recollection, my Dad suggested it was a build up of organophosphates that activated the prions. He saw immediate symptoms if cattle were over-dosed warble-fly treatment. The suggestion was that gulf war syndrome was linked.
He was basically threatened by superiors in the then MinAg.
He had to oversee the slaughter of 000s of healthy cattle to appease the EU at the time; All the meantime France and Germany had much higher rates and refused to fully disclose.
And don't start about foot and mouth.....
Well in that case your dad was a crank and he was taking drivel. Or else you have misremembered.
Yeah that one makes very little sense. I thought you meant he had done some proper research with brain samples etc.
Well he certainly wasn't a crank (highly respected govt Vet) and I haven't misremembered (It was a big deal back then). That said, I fly aeroplanes not fix cattle!
However it was based on 'in field' observations and not in the lab.
But as ever it's nice to see people jump to conclusions. You don't know anything about the people you've just accused of poor memory or poor judgement. Reflects poorly on you.
However it was based on ‘in field’ observations and not in the lab.
There is only lab tests to confirm it as far as I am aware. Though spotting things that cause similar symptoms and ruling them out would be important as they would make the problem look worse than it is.
I do remember a couple of researchers in the mould of the mmr guy kicking about at the time grabbing funding from anyone who would pay them to prove links.
Edit with further googleing
There is still no live test, it must be done post mortem so that was the main issue with your dad's research there it just doesn't stack up with the known science on the disease.
Thanks Mike. Not really a parallel. My old man didn't have any axe to grind other than we were producing BSE symptoms on a large scale through chemicals. Not surprising when you consider what the chemicals were. At the time the knee jerk reaction was to shut down the meat industry whilst our continental 'friends' chuckled away.
Lab results can prove hypotheses; sometimes those hypotheses come from outside the lab. I'm not saying my old man was right, but there was a lot of misinformation at the time. He'd had exposure to tens of thousands of cattle by the end, so had a large data field to work from.
Lab results can prove hypotheses; sometimes those hypotheses come from outside the lab. I’m not saying my old man was right, but there was a lot of misinformation at the time. He’d had exposure to tens of thousands of cattle by the end, so had a large data field to work from.
I can see him being able to understand what could produce similar symptoms - important to know but as I said unless he was getting them examined post mortem he had no idea is any of them actually had BSE at all. There is no other way to prove the existence of the disease (well there could be but it would result in the death of the animal)
At the time the knee jerk reaction was to shut down the meat industry whilst our continental ‘friends’ chuckled away.
Yes but it achieved a near extinction of the disease in the UK, there is a scottish reporting doc if you google it where anything over 48 months that dies needs testing, it's strict monitoring like this that is making UK beef safe.
Did they then change the chemical used to treat warble fly?
Good Q. A quick Google (suffices for other contributors here) suggests warble flies were eradicated about 1990. How long the cattle were treated for I don't know.
PS. @mike he never said they had BSE. He noted they demonstrated identical symptoms after high doses. His suggestion was that there was a link between chemical ingestion (skin in cattle, dietary in humans) and BSE/CJD.
PPS. Perhaps now I'm a qualified Google searcher I can insult people's parents and question their memory at will.....?!
http://www.thatsfarming.com/news/warble-fly-cattle-health
From reading you would treat to eradicate them not as a precaution.
PS. @mike he never said they had BSE. He noted they demonstrated identical symptoms after high doses. His suggestion was that there was a link between chemical ingestion (skin in cattle, dietary in humans) and BSE/CJD.
PPS. Perhaps now I’m a qualified Google searcher I can insult people’s parents and question their memory at will…..?!
OK, there must have been more too it that that because even at the time it would have been easy to disprove at least, given the amount of hysteria going on people wanted good solid researched facts on the topic.
FWIW it was a very hotly discussed and read up on topic in our house growing up what with my Dad being a farmer and it being an incredibly worrying and stressful time back then.
@mike yes there was a lot more to it. I barely saw him over that period. Sadly the foot & mouth debacle finished his health off and he's been gravely ill ever since.
Just checked, Bury St Edmunds didn't go away and has remained in place.
Can't panic over that now can we.
So how was the BSE discovered, if the cattle didn't have it?
One did, discovered after death the rest of the potential ones were tested after being killed and no more was found