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Mad Cow Found
In French Goat

By Diana Pereira
The Globeand Mail Update
1-28-5
 
A goat in France has been diagnosed with mad-cow disease, various news agencies have reported.
 
The European Union confirmed the case on Friday, saying that the animal is the first other than a cow to have the disease.
 
British scientists have confirmed the goat has the brain-wasting disease after first suspecting that the goat had scrapie, a disease in the same family as bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE).
 
According to the EU's food safety group, EFSA, further checks are necessary to tell what the risk will be from goat meat.
 
Since 1993, there have been only five mad cows identified in Canada. BSE is most likely transmitted through tainted cattle protein used in cattle feed.
 
Earlier this month, Ottawa acknowledged that manufacturers may have used infected livestock feed even after new rules were implemented in 1997 that would have prohibited such practices. Representatives from the U.S. Agriculture Department have been in Canada this week, examining how well the feed ban has worked.
 
Canada's economy has suffered as a result of a case last year, and the cattle industry has lost an estimated $5-billion.
 
The U.S.-Canada border is still closed to live cattle imports but is expected to reopen on March 7. Earlier this month, a U.S. cattlemen's group filed a lawsuit, still in the courts, to keep the border closed permanently. In the meantime, the group has said that it may seek an injunction to delay the reopening.
 
Japan also banned Canadian beef in 2003 after the discovery of a mad-cow case in Alberta. During Prime Minister Paul Martin's visit to Asia last week, he met with Japan's Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi and received a commitment to speed up the opening of the border.
 
Canada has recorded only one incidence of a human death resulting from the human version of mad cow, variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease.
 
The Canadian was believed to have contracted the disease while living in Britain. Britain has recorded 148 deaths, while France has recorded nine, Ireland two, the United States one and Italy one.
 
A study release last week reported that the proteins responsible for causing brain-wasting diseases in people and animals, called prions, had found in organs of lab mice other than the brain.
 
Before the discovery, it was believed that prions were located only in the brain and central nervous system. Since the findings were preliminary, the Canadian Food Inspection agency said that there is no reason for alarm in terms of how the discovery will affect the animal feed chain and human health.
 
With reports from André Picard, Brian Laghi and Dawn Walton
 
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.
20050128.wgoat0128/BNStory/International/
 
 
EU Finds First Case Of Mad Cow In Goats
 
BBC News
1-28-5
 
A French goat has tested positive for mad cow disease - the first animal in the world other than a cow to have bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE).
 
The European Commission says further testing will be done to see if the incidence is an isolated one.
 
The animal, which was slaughtered in 2002, was initially thought to have scrapie, a similar brain-wasting condition sometimes seen in goats.
 
But British scientists have now confirmed the disease was in fact BSE.
 
More than 100 people in the UK have died from vCJD (variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease), the human form of BSE, after eating tainted beef.
 
But the EC stressed on Friday that precautionary measures put in place in recent years to protect the human food chain from contaminated meats meant there was no need for alarm over the latest finding.
 
Markos Kyprianou, EU Commissioner responsible for Health and Consumer Protection, said: "I want to reassure consumers that existing safety measures in the EU offer a very high level of protection.
 
"This case was discovered thanks to the EU testing system in place in France.
 
"The testing programme has shown us that there is a very low incidence rate of TSEs (transmissible spongiform encephalopathies) in goats and allowed us to detect suspect animals so that they can be taken out of the food chain, as was done with this goat and its entire herd."
 
UK Expert Opinion
 
BSE had not previously been found under natural circumstances in ruminants other than cattle - although its presence in goats or other ruminants had been viewed as theoretically possible.
 
Although some incidences of TSEs in animals such as cats and antelopes have looked very similar to the BSE strain, there is some debate over whether these really were mad cow.
 
In 2001, a study in the UK was thought to have found BSE in sheep. It later transpired, however, that the scientists working on the research study were mistakenly looking at samples obtained from cow brains.
 
The EC now wants to test 200,000 goats in the 25 EU member states over the next six months.
 
The testing would concentrate on countries where cases of BSE have been reported in cattle in the past, including the UK.
 
Current testing has already shown there is a low incidence of scrapie in goats. In the UK, for example, only two cases have been confirmed since 1997. In France, which has a far bigger goat population, just 19 positives were recorded among 21,000 animals tested in 2003.
 
Across the EU bloc as a whole, there are believed to be more than 11.5 million goats.
 
The European Commission's Standing Committee on Food Chain and Animal Health will meet to discuss the case of the French goat and its implications next week.
 
The French agriculture ministry said the goat came from the Ardeche region, in southeast France. It was kept in a flock of 300 animals which were all slaughtered and their carcasses destroyed.
 
When French research was unable to distinguish the TSE found in the goat from the BSE strain, samples were sent to the Community Reference Laboratory (CRL) for TSEs in Weybridge, UK, for its expert opinion. It confirmed the presence of the BSE strain.
 
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/4216431.stm
 
 
EU Finds First Case Of Mad Cow Is G oats
 
1-28-5
 
BRUSSELS (Reuters) - A French goat slaughtered in 2002 has tested positive for mad cow disease, the first case of the disease found in animals other than cattle, the European Commission said on Friday.
 
Mad cow disease, a brain wasting disease, rampaged across Europe in the 1990s. Over 100 people have died from the human form of the disease after eating tained meat.
 
"Precautionary measures to protect consumers from this eventuality have been applied in the EU for several years ... any possible risk to consumers is minimal," the Commission said in a statement.
 
"The European Commsision prooposes to step up testing to determine if this is an isolated incident."
 
 
Patricia A. Doyle, PhD
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