Mad Cow Disease

[Donlin Stud]

Hi from our local little newsletter:

link

Edited to add: Someone replied to this article about how a hobby farmer thought it was really cute how their pet sheep ate their dog's biscuits.....................................................................................................

[lonecowhand]

Thanks Donna. Does anyone know, do we have these same restrictions/guidelines in U.S. A.? I never hear about them.

[otf]

lonecowhand, contact USDA?

Gale

[jamshundred]

I find the "mad-cow" thing very confusing.  Why is it such a big deal when there is so little incidence of it?  In England they allow the varmints to roam at will ( and it is illegal to put an end to that roaming), that cause TB and they slaughter thousands of animals on circumstantial evidence.  How many mad cows in the US in modern times?  One?  There's far more TB.   How many in Canada, two or a few?  

Judy

[genebo]

There have actually been more cases in the US than have been publicized. Not a lot, but an occasional one.

The rules the US put into effect during the English mad cow crisis were more preventative than anything else. In other words, they weren't done to try to stop an epidemic, they were made to prevent an epidemic. The fact that there have been so few cases may be due to the rules.

The rules were intended to provide a means to trace any cow that was found to have the disease back to it's source. Some attempts at this were met with objections and abandoned, but today's methods pass by unnoticed. Whenever an cow passes through a slaughter facility its origin is documented. The owner has to sign.

The rules were intended to prevent any contaminated meat from getting into the supply chain. Having noted that there had not been a case of mad cow in any cows under 36 months old, they put in special rules for slaughtering animals over 30 months old. Denying the return of any cuts that contained brain or spinal cord from an animal over 30 months old is supposed to protect you.

The rules were intended to prevent the transfer of infection from animal to animal. They made it illegal to feed any feeds made from a ruminant animal to a ruminant animal. The labels of feed for ruminants have to say that there are no ruminant products contained within. All of your current feeds for cattle say this.

A problem occurs because that rule does not apply to feeds for non-ruminants. Pet foods in particular have no prohibitions against including ruminant products. That is why you need to make sure that your cattle don't get into the dog or cat food. That could be tragic for your cattle or for you.

Goats and sheep are ruminants and thir feed follows the same rules as cattle feed. Horses and chickens are not ruminants. They can't get mad cow disease and their feed doesn't have the same safeguards that ruminant feeds do. A lot of manufacturers of animal feed for chickens and horses and any other animals that are normally fed in the barn yard will voluntarily exclude all ruminant products from their feed. They write it on the label. I look for that before I buy.

The seriousness of the threat was brought home when a family relative was diagnosed with variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. That is the human version of mad cow disease. He died from it.

There is a lot at risk from mad cow, and the precautions to prevent it aren't hard nor do they cost extra. Just keep all other feeds away from your cattle. Let the butcher follow the rules for processing your over-age ruminants.

[Donlin Stud]

Hi

Right from the very first bag of feed purchased, we ensured the wording ‘this product does not contain restricted animal material’ was on it.

The only bag that we do put up with not having it is the Gamebird Starter for the young Guinea Fowl. But this food is only allowed in the nursery where break-ins from moos is impossible. Once out of the nursery, the Guinea fowl only have access to poultry feed which is free of the restricted material.

And thank goodness we did this from the start because we have had a couple of incidents where moos have helped themselves into the poultry enclosure where they have skillfully used horns to open lids on wheelie bins full of poultry pellets and grain, and then we have cheeky calves that every now and then squeeze themselves through the gate’s chained small opening (allows the poultry to freely roam the place at their leisure) to taste test what’s left in the poultry’s feed troughs as well as chase the chooks for a bit.

Plus we do treat the moos with chaff mixed with some horse stud mix and cattle nuts and there is only one brand of horse mix in our area that is free.