AVMA says mad cow disease won’t hurt public
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 1994:
SCHAUMBERG, Illinois––University of San
Francisco researchers led by Dr. Stanley Pruisiner reported
on April 22 that they have discovered how disease-carrying
agents called prions replicate, a key step toward finding a
way to fight scrapie, a fatal brain disease of sheep and
goats, and bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), bet-
ter known as “mad cow disease.” More than 100,000
British cattle have been destroyed due to BSE since 1986,
while isolated cases have appeared in seven other nations.
The spring 1994 Farm Sanctuary newsletter
meanwhile asserted that “At least two British dairy farmers
whose cows had BSE, and who had been drinking milk
from their herds, died from CJD, the human counterpart to
mad cow disease…There is evidence to suggest that BSE
has existed in the United States for some time. In 1985,
several thousand mink at a Wisconsin fur farm died of
transmissible mink encephalopathy (TME) which was
caused by their diet, primarily ‘downer’ cows. Research
done in the U.S.,” Farm Sanctuary continued, “has linked
BSE with the use of ‘downer’ cows… Scientists are now
concerned that the disease currently referred to by the U.S.
meat and dairy industries as ‘downer cow syndrome’ could
actually be BSE.”