Live BSE test progress

[kato]

Key DNA may lead to BSE blood test

Scientists at the University of Calgary say they may have found a common DNA denominator in animals infected with diseases such as BSE.

And that, in turn, may mean BSE could eventually be confirmed simply and cheaply by a live blood test.

A reasonably accurate method of testing live cattle for bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) would likely be the grail of BSE research. Confirming BSE currently means examining chunks of a dead animal's brain tissues.

"There is currently no reliable way to tell if an animal may have a prion infection before it becomes obviously sick," said Kevin Keough of the Alberta Prion Research Institute. "If there were a reliable way to know, it would be of great benefit to producers, processors and wildlife managers."

Researchers at Calgary and in Germany studied 19 elk, including a healthy group and a group infected with chronic wasting disease -- a relative of BSE in cattle, scrapie in sheep and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in people.

The research also included 16 BSE-infected and non-infected cattle.

Between those groups, the university said in an online newsletter Thursday, the researchers were able to identify specific DNA sequences in blood samples of live animals infected with BSE or CWD.

"The next steps are to analyze a time course series for BSE-infected cattle, to screen different cattle breeds for variances in the sequence patterns and also to look at cattle with brain tumors, brain trauma and other brain infections to make sure we are really picking up BSE," said Dr. Christoph Sensen, the principal investigator from Calgary's faculty of medicine.

Once that's done, Sensen said, "our team sees the possibility for the production of a low-cost, high-output standard test kit for industry use in the next few years."

If those next steps pan out as hoped, a BSE blood test kit would likely be cheaper than currently used post-mortem BSE tests, available at a price that would be affordable for most farmers.

At a sufficiently low cost, "it would be possible to certify live animals and beef to be 'BSE-tested' and to keep the export channels open at all times," said veterinarian Stefanie Czub, a study co-author and head of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency's BSE laboratory.

Another research group on the Prairies has been working on a parallel path, after having found levels of a telltale protein in cattle urine indicated the presence of BSE with "100 per cent accuracy," but in a small sample set.

That research group includes staff from the Public Health Agency of Canada's National Microbiology Laboratory (NML), working with others from the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA), the University of Manitoba and Germany's Federal Research Institute of Animal Health.

The Manitoba group's finding -- that disease progression could be monitored based on changes in the abundance of a set of proteins -- could have applications for the assessment of potential treatments, observers said when the urine research went public in September.

[rkaiser]

Thanks Kato.

Between this and the news that is coming from the BSE class action boys --- 2009 will be a better year than the wool over the eyes years we have seen in the past.

[grassfarmer]

That's interesting, particularly the part about the CFIA involvement. Had someone tell me the other night that they could currently buy a BSE test kit in Seattle for around $11 but were prohibited from using it on Canadian soil by CFIA. I wonder which is true?

[Sawbones]

BSE related facts
Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE) is a relatively new disease of cattle. It was first recognized and defined in the United Kingdom in November 1986. Over the next few years the epidemic grew considerably and affected all parts of the country but to different degrees. It reached its peak in 1992, when 36,680 cases were confirmed in Great Britain, and since then has shown a steady decline. There are now fewer than 4 suspected clinical BSE cases per week in Great Britain, compared to more than 850 per week in 1992
The key animal health control measure is the feed ban which was introduced in July 1988. This was brought in to prevent the incorporation of potentially infectious material into feed for ruminants, and so prevent cattle which were not already infected from becoming infected. If no additional action were taken the incidence of BSE would continue to decline until it is eradicated
It is believed by most scientists that the disease may be transmitted to human beings who eat the brain or spinal cord of infected carcasses. In humans, it is known as new variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD or nvCJD), and by April 2008, it had killed 164 people in Britain, and 40 elsewhere with the number expected to rise because of the disease's long incubation period. Between 460,000 and 482,000 BSE-infected animals had entered the human food chain before controls on high-risk offal were introduced in 1989. The number in Britain dying from the disease peaked in the year 2000 when 28 cases were recorded. The last few years have seen the number of deaths decline to single digits. The population of the UK is 60.6 million.
Canada discovered its first case of BSE in December 1993, in a cow imported from the UK, after having “potentially rendered” 68 cattle imported from the UK prior to that discovery. This discovery had very little affect on trade or beef consumption. In 1997, Canada followed the lead of many other countries by banning the feeding of meat and bone meal to ruminants. It wasn’t until May of 2003 when the second case was diagnosed but this time in an animal born in Canada. That created a huge international response and many countries including the USA closed their border to Canadian meat. Since that time, there have been 15 cases diagnosed in Canada, none of which have entered the food chain. There have been no diagnosed clinical cases of the variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in the human population in Canada.
Although the physical affects of BSE have been minimal, the economic affects have been devastating. According to a report prepared for the Canadian Animal Health Coalition, the direct economic cost to the Canadian livestock industry by early 2004 was estimated at nearly $3.3 billion. An additional loss in equity to the cow-calf sector was estimated at $3.0 billion, for a total economic impact from BSE of $6.3 billion.
Canadian cattlemen have blindly accepted the fact that BSE is a rampant disease and must be irradicated at any cost. Although the disease is devastating to those affected, the likelihood of infection is extremely low. I had to admire the way McCain handled the outbreak of Listeria at Maple Leaf. He did not try to hide the problem, accepted the company’s responsibilities, compensated those affected and implemented changes so that it would not happen again.
In the case of BSE, we made the changes by banning the feeding of meat and bone meal to cattle, we implemented changes to identify and remove SRM’s (specific risk material) and that should have been adequate. Instead, we remove SRM’s from every animal slaughtered and treat the material as though it contains prions even though there has never been an animal under 30 months diagnosed with BSE or even a prion carrier. Approximately 75% of the cattle slaughtered in Canada are under 30 months and yet they carry the added costs (estimates of $40-$90) of SRM removal.
The time for panic over BSE has past and we can now address it for what it really is and that is another non tariff trade barrier. We will probably still find 1 case in 3 million cows as that is the assumed rate of mutation for prions in the human population for Creutzfeldt-Jacob disease

[kato]

Randy, have you heard something we don't know about the class action suit?