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Topic: Mad Cow found in French goat

Reality. Bites.
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 6718

posted 30 January 2005 10:32 AM

http://tinyurl.com/6jdeh

I just can't help picturing that goat trying to explain to the other goats how he got BSE.

From: Gone for good | Registered: Aug 2004 | IP: Logged

skdadl
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 478

posted 30 January 2005 10:52 AM

Is there a scientist about who can explain to us the distinction between scrapie and BSE? Isn't the speculation that BSE first developed because cattle were eating feed made with by-products from scrapie-infected sheep?

Certainly, sheep have had scrapie forever. I remember learning about scrapie in a grade eight social studies class (50s Alberta).

From: gone | Registered: May 2001 | IP: Logged

brebis noire
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 7136

posted 30 January 2005 11:35 AM

I'm no scientist, but I was in vet school when the BSE thing blew up in Britain and every semester we listened to a bunch of scientists try to explain the differences among the different variants of prion (infectious protein) diseases, that include BSE, scrapie, wasting disease in elk, Creutzfeld-Jakob, and kuru (New Guinea cannibal disease), plus others in felines and mink (I think). We still don't know all that much, except for the scientists who work at it every day, the testing and communicating results takes so long that knowledge is progressing very slowly. Proteins are teeny tiny things, after all..smaller than viruses.

They've been testing this goat for two years, if you can believe it...just so that us Westerners can eat goat cheese without fear and trembling.

I don't think anybody knows what all of this means, ultimately.

From: Quebec | Registered: Oct 2004 | IP: Logged

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