Subject: Re: BSE panic ends.

From: Oz <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 23 Apr 1996 09:20:41 +0100

In article <[email-masked]>, Andy
<[email-masked]> writes
>In article <[email-masked]> Oz <[email-masked]> 
>writes:
>
>>Well, see, there's this thing about it taking five to ten years after
>>infection before clinical symptoms appear, and it is generally accepted
>>that some feed in store etc was used up to 1990. I could go on, but many
>>readers in several of the groups posted have heard it all before.
>>Needless to say the decline is exactly what the Govt epidemiologists
>>prediced in 1988, so surprise surprise.
>
>I've heard that view before but I'm struggling to think what feed manufactured 
>before the ban 7/88 might still be usable in or upto 1990.

There were some transitionary arrangements, but I forget the details.
Certainly left over calf food would typically be used the following
year, particularly if calving was seasonal. As I remember at the time it
took (doesn't it always) quite a time for the regulations to be properly
implemented (and probably published) and for stocks in the feed mills to
be used up. I think that MAFF themselves consider 1989 as being suspect
as they went round plugging holes and finding bits of old feed here and
there. As a result it is generally considered that 1990 (ie Jan) as the
point when the ban was really effective (but see below).

>The expiry date on compound cattle feed is generally 3 months from 
>manufacture, the only things I can think of with even a one year shelf life 
>are some mineral supplements (no animal protein) or some calf milk replacers. 
>I know of no calf milk containing meat & bone meal (as defined by SEAC) - 
>surely people aren't suggesting the milk powder and/or tallow in calf milk 
>replacers carry BSE?

The expiry date is typically on the vitamins. Most farms will use old
feed if sweet and clean, maybe blending it with new at say 1 bag of old
to two of new.

>Many other people seem to have assumed that simply because it was permitted to 
>use ruminant meat etc in ruminant feeds that everyone manufacturing cattle 
>feed did do so. Clearly there are going to be exceptions where for a variety 
>of reasons cattle feed was manufactured without meat & bone meal even during 
>the '81-88 period when the "infection" was supposed to have been propagating.

Least cost formulations tend to throw up the same recipe wherever they
are done. So the differences may be less than one might imagine.

I have been discussing the possible contamination of cattle feeds with 
M&B meal used for pig and poultry diets in the feed mills with people in 
the know. I am horrified. The press and various pressure groups have 
been concentrating on the poor old farmer who is doing all he can, 
indeed can do no more. Unfortunately the feed compounders have never 
been examined in depth, yet they are pretty much the only users of M&B 
meal, and they also produce (in many cases) cattle feed. I find it only 
to easy to believe that the (admittedly very small number) of animals 
born after the ban was effective, have in fact been inadvertently 
exposed to contaminated feed by this route. This would produce a 'tail'
of infected animals at very low level for some years to come and is bad
news for the cattle population even if the effect for humans is zero.

------------------------------- 
'Oz     "When I knew little, all was certain. The more I learnt,
        the less sure I was. Is this the uncertainty principle?"