I see, dairy cattle not eating animal byproducts, therefore not
getting BSE, therefore not being slaughtered and reduced in
numbers owing to BSE?

Total and utter rubbish, you have missed the point by so much it is
hardly
worth the effort of correcting you.

So instead dairy getting supplementary feed till they become too
old, then go onto grass as beef animals?


You have totally misunderstood, the dairy herd is a major source of beef
animals because of the calves they produce. In the UK, as an approximation,
60% of beef came from the reared calves of dairy cows.

snipped

So animals eat 1/3 of UK wheat, pigs and poultry eat the better part
of this, but it is also an important supplementary feed for dairy.

Wheat is rarely fed as straight wheat to dairy cows. If is included ground
and mixed in a balanced compound
Its inclusion in compounds is determined by cost, all compounders use least
cost software to produce a compound of the designated feed quality for the
lowest price. So if wheat is cheap the inclusion will increase, this
happened last year. This year with wheat being dear, the proportion is
falling.
But for dairy cows, too much wheat can cause nutritional problems and so
tends to be avoided. With poultry inclusion rates can be as high as 65%,
with pigs 60%, I would be wary about buying a dairy cake with more than 25%
wheat inclusion


Did or did not BSE culling cause a reduction of some percent in
demand for UK wheat?

No, because the number of dairy cows did not change noticeably, and the
number of their offspring didn't chance much. Remember that due to weather
the UK grain harvest can vary between 11 and 16 million tonnes anyway, so a
change in usage of a few thousand tonnes is not going to have any meaningful
effect on price.

Did that follow on to a some percent sooner
filling of silos and wheat going straight on to market, triggering
lower prices?

Note:
Linkname: From BSE to GMOs - What Have We Learned?
URL: http://www.i-sis.org.uk/bse.php
*****
[...]
The aim of this booklet is to inform the public about some of
the major failings in the government's handling of the BSE
crises, and to demonstrate that a similar scenario is now being
repeated with GMOs. Dr Narang combines his experience with BSE,
with his concerns over food GM foods, to convey an important
message to all members of the public.
[...]
The authorities in Ireland adopted the approach of slaughtering
the whole herd in which any clinical case of BSE was detected.
Breeding from affected animals was also stopped so that the
infectious agent did not pass from one generation to the next.
These practices succeeded in keeping the total number of BSE
cases in Ireland to below 100.

Advice to adopt the same approach was also available in Britain
to the relevant authority, the Ministry of Agriculture Fisheries
and Food (MAFF), but it was ignored, and breeding from affected
animals continued in Britain. Out of the170, 000 animals
confirmed with BSE in Britain, 40, 000 of them were born after
the feed ban was introduced in 1988.
[...]
Dr Narang has published all his findings in peer reviewed
scientific journals on the nature of the infectious agent of
BSE. The infectious agent is a slow acting virus that consists
of a single stranded (ss) DNA genome which is associated with
the prion protein. Furthermore, the agent is transmitted
maternally from cow to calf via the ssDNA. Without the
implementation of a diagnostic test, maternal transmission has
gone unchecked. This means that the infectious agent may still
be widespread within British livestock while thousands of
perfectly healthy cattle may have been destroyed unnecessarily.
Dr Narang has also suggested the need to develop a vaccine
against BSE and new variant CJD.

In 1997, the Medical Research Council (MRC) agreed to evaluate
Dr Narang's diagnostic test (western blotting/ELISA equipment)
and set up a special CJD urine test-committee to oversee his
work. The National CJD Surveillance Unit at Edinburgh was asked
to provide Dr Narang with 20 blind samples of urine, 10 samples
from CJD cases and 10 from non-CJD cases, so as to evaluate the
test.

However, the National CJD Surveillance Unit failed to provide
the urine samples in the form requested. The test therefore has
not been evaluated by the MRC and no CJD diagnostic test is in
use to this day, making it impossible to monitor the actual
number of CJD cases. Dr Narang has found it increasingly
difficult, if not impossible, to get funding for scientific
research in this country. He has been forced to pursue his
endeavours abroad.
[...]
******
A tonsil test was recently used in New Zealand to prove a young
person did not have vCJD. So apparently some of Narang's work is
getting through, now.

I am trying to figure the economic forces in it all. Who made the
most money on the great cull? Or was it nobody and just stupid?

Only money made was by people who suddenly got big research grants. Shroud
waving rules. We spent £4 billion a year and yet current predictions are
that there will be less than a couple of hundred dead. If we had spent this
money on kidney treatment or even maternity, we would have saved tens of
thousands of lives.

Jim Webster