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BSE and bloodmeal [was Re: Pesky squirrel]

Square Foot Gardening List - http://www.flinet.com/~gallus/sqft.html

>About two years ago I watched 20/20, 60 min. or some such program which 
>discussed a rare brain disease(a protien caused the brain to be riddled with 
>tiny pin holes which caused all kinds of horrible physical and mental 
>problems)traced back to animals who were fed animal parts of other 
>animals(check out what chickens, beef cattle and others in our food chain are 
>fed these days. 

The disease is bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), one of a class of
diseases that cause swiss-cheese-like holes in the brain of various mammals.
The class is called transmissible spongiform encephalopathies.  I have
posted about this subject to the SqFt list many times in the last 2 years.

>It was compared to a disease found in women in some country I can't recall 
>who got the disease from canabalizing their dead as a religious practice.

The disease is kuru and the place is New Guinea.
  
>Sorry to relate such a horrible story, but the whole point is that they said 
>that this protien is passed on to people in the US and elsewhere by use of 
>bonemeal and bloodmeal.  They did not say it was in every bag, but there is 
>not way to be sure..

Indeed.  If a BSE-infected cow was slaughtered and its blood or body parts
(not meat muscle tissue but certain organs) became incorporated into
bonemeal or dried bloodmeal, the agent that causes BSE would still be viable
in that meal.  People later inhaling dust particles from the bonemeal could
definitely become infected with the BSE agent.  Scientists currently believe
that the BSE agent may cause new-variant Cruetzfeld-Jakob disease, which
looks and acts very much like Alzheimers, is incurable, and attacks young
people (teens and up), without any cure.

This is serious business, so don't use bonemeal or bloodmeal if alternatives
are available.  It is emphatically NOT possible to tell if these materials
have been made from safe animal parts or not.

For more info on BSE, go to the USDA APHIS website (www.aphis.usda.gov) and
search on the word "spongiform."  You will be given links to several of our
factsheets on this subject.

--Janet
[who edited them all]


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