wrote:
In article ,
Martin Brown wrote:
It didn't do cattle farmers much good. They took all the flack but were
not responsible for it. Animals died a particularly nasty death as did a
few very unlucky humans. Most could be traced back to cheap and nasty
mechanically recovered meat characteristic of your average junk food
vendor. Some real cuts of meat also ceased to exist as a result.

And all to make a few extra bucks for the feed companies by cutting
corners on the processing.

Precisely.

Prions seem to be rather potent infective agents if they get the chance.
It is also potentially a very slow burning infection in humans so it is
possible that the damage already done will only show up around 2030.

Precisely.

It isn't clear whether they created a new disease or massively amplified
the transmission rate of an existing low level illness by forcing
ruminants to become cannibals and adding diseased meat into the mix.

No, it has been definitely identified as different from scrapie,
in being more easily transmitted across species and (if I recall)
rather nastier even in sheep.

Sorry. I didn't mean to imply that it was scrapie. More that it was a
pre-existing condition in just a handful of cows either arising
spontaneously or as a very low level rare infection that stayed below
the radar. If a vet only saw one case in a lifetime for instance.

It was only when we provided a means for the infection to spread rapidly
that exponential growth in the number of cases occurred.

I suspect if they had restricted this cavalier practice of putting
noxious junk into animal food to pigs there would not have been a
problem. Omnivores are better able to cope with a dodgy diet. Infected
cows died a horrible death which did at least alert people to the
problem. It only really made the news when it got too common to ignore.

It was also due to a couple of whistle-blowers. The government was
doing its usual (attempting to scapegoat them) when the publicity
started, and they backpedalled as fast as only Whitehall can. If it
hadn't been for them, we would have had an extra couple of years
before any action was taken.

I wonder if Gummers granddaughter still eats burgers?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/369625.stm

After that total fiasco it was no surprise that government statements
about GM food being safe to eat were not believed.

Regards,
Martin Brown