Does anyone know of any research that has been done on the potential for contracting mad cow disease from using bone meal or blood meal as a soil amendment for veggies or herbs. That is, assuming no direct contact with the stuff.
Human CJD has been attributed to eating beef contaminated with brain or spinal cord material (where the harmful prions live.) If you do not eat garden bone meal, you need not fear it as a disease vector.
Take peak at
Bill
Four cases in Great Britain were not traceable to any meat eaten, but all four were inveterate gardeners who used bonemeal. It is believed they inhaled the initial prion infection while spreading bone meal in their gardens.
Agricultural lobby & spin doctors have hired scientific spokespersons to state pretty much "there is no evidence that BSE can infect humans by inhaling bone meal." The guys hired to say this usually have five or six degrees in science, but never did any actual studies, & get paid by Agribusiness which uses bonemeal.
It remains that the four cases in England have never been explained by any alternative theory, since those four gardeners had not been exposed to infected meat.
It is also not being studied to what degree the BSE prions can be absorbed, unaltered, into edible tubors & plants --thus entering the food chain even for vegetarians. It is theoretically possible, but it isn't being studied, so there is no evidence one way or the other.
The prions have reached the bone meal product by several methods. While it is no longer legal to put infected sheep & cattle meat in feeds for dogs, cats, pigs, or cattle, it is still legal to make a rendering product from waste meats that are not to be used as animal feeds. BSE infects game animals in the United States, especially elk, & these end up at rendering plants as roadkill. They also render sheep, the most commonly infected farm animals in the United States. Lastly, while it is widely believed that chickens cannot be infected, some scientists speculate that chickens have "safely" eaten prion-infected feeds merely because their lifespans are too short for the infection to injur them -- but the prions could nevertheless be in their brainstem & spine, & rendered chicken meal could also be a source of the prions.
And the rendering plant industry is self-regulating (meaning largely unregulated). On the rare occasion when anyone ever checked to see if self-regulation worked, the vats obviously had everything from zoo animals & roadkill to dog & cat carcasses from animal control & run-over racoons, with wildlly inadequate methods of monitoring which end-product batch gets labeled liver meal or chicken meal or beefmeal allegedly suitable to feed even pets -- & you can bet they care even less what goes into their garden-grade garbage. Not much in the news was an American recall of Canadian pet foods found to be contaminated by BSE prions, but if anyone thinks they're more careful in say Milwaukee than in Alberta, they're kiddin' themselves.
Because the risks of bone meal in garfdening is not being studied for publication in peer-review contexts, it is possible to say there is no definitive evidence of risk, & fail to mention no one is looking for the evidence because vested parties fund such research & can pick & choose what suits agribusiness best. And those four British cases remain a haunting answer to any Agribusiness spin about it all beikng unproven. One of these victims reportly "never wore a mask & used to grind up the soil & make a big cloud of dust" when adding bonemeal to his rose garden, & was exposed to it on many occasions over a great length of time. The majority of Britain's human cases ate at MacDonalds -- MacDonalds was the sole source of the contaminated meat! -- but four victims were evidently exposed only to bone meal fertilizers. That fact doesn't qualify as a "study" so agribusiness dismisses the cases as unproven, & will certainly never admit how extremely likely it is.
In a garden that is not used for harvested vegetables, & if a gardener wears a high-end face mask while spreading bonemeal (not one of those worthless felt paper mouth guards), the possibility of risk would seem largely to be mitigated. Not that I've ever seen a gardener with even one of the worthless felt-paper face guards which stop nothing from going up the snout, let alone an industrial grade real-deal filter mask.
But even if it were reasonable to assume it is safe to breathe in bone meal while fertilizing the garden, I would not use it. I do not want to look at my gardens & have to think, "I've sprinkled rendered animals all over that."
-paghat the ratgirl
I don't know that data, but soft rock phosphate is far better for soil than is bone meal and seaweed is far better for soil than is blood meal.
...as an aside.
VNeed a good, cheap, knowledge expanding present for a friend?
The message from snipped-for-privacy@netscape.net (paghat) contains these words:
Some of the victims were vegetarians. I have not heard that all the vegetarians were inveterate gardeners who used bonemeal.
The majority
Er, for the benefit of others who may not know..Paghat is joking. No single source of infected meat was identifiable.
That theory has not been publicised in Britain afaik, so could you provide a source for it please?
Janet.
Orwell
The most recent [ West of England Medical School-pub. May2004] research suggests that eating meat might very well have little or no relevance~~ the prion being capable of withstanding autoclaving of instruments. The work has shown that removed tonsils and appendixes from healthy patients show a significant [but small] proportion having the prion. The proportion, when extrapolated, means there are several thousand carriers of vCJD who could have contaminated others, or been contaminated, via contact with affected, but supposedly sterilised, instruments. It is not known if these will eventually succumb to vCJD or even if this is 100% related to BSE.
I suppose I should take precautions when using bone meal but I'm always too busy to bother. Others suggest that if I did get 'mad cow disease' they would notice little difference~~and they are my friends!! Brian.
By no means a joke. Deaths from e-coli & mad cow is why they are so often called McDeath or McDisease, serving Big McBrain & McPoo burgers.
Most or all the UK cases were from meats processed by McKey Food Corporation under contract to McDonalds. McDeadly was where victims purchased the greater percentage of beef in their diets. McDonalds became McLibel trying to sue people into shutting up about it; they didn't care if they won or lost the suits, which were intended to be costly for their foes. The suits were defined as "strategic lawsuits to stop public activism" & succeeded in frightening even news agencies into mentioning it, because short of a doubleblind independent study (which was never going to happen) no proof could ever be proof enough, & McLibel would sue & sue & sue & become the biggest nuisances on earth. Newspapers would rather have McDonald's advertising dollars rather than be the target of another of McDonald's Strategic Suits Against Public Activism, so they won't harp on the connection.
But somehow in their suit-happy mood McDonalds never had the nerve to sue Eric Schlosser who documented McDonald's role in spreading diseases to people, because that's stuff that won't help them once it is quoted thereafter from sworn court testimony.
It was reported on Dateline in August 20, 1997, that four victims in UK of the human form of Mad Cow were not meat eaters, but had been exposed to bonemeal in their gardening practices. It was also in numerous newspapers at the time. The Dateline report had the daughter of one of the victim describing her father in his rose garden stirring up a veritable cloud of bonemeal dust. Doubtlessly it was in UK newspapers just as commonly at the time. But public memory is short, & when a new Associated Press article does appear as a reminder (such as by Rukmini Callimachi this past December, in the wake of a new mad cow scare) who really reads the newspapers these days? Callimachi reported that only THREE non-meat-eating gardeners died, but previous articles always say it was four; there's always absolute agreement they were gardeners who used bonemeal, & had no other possible point of exposure to the deadly prions.
In consequence of these facts, the British Royal Horticutural Society recommen ds that bonemeal users never use bonemeal without a facemask. The utter uselessness of the sorts of masks you can buy in nearest hardware store, unfortunately RHS failed to note that.
After the mad cow scare last year here in Washington state (thanks to infected cows brought in from Canada making it into the human foodchain) a number of safety measures were put into place that never existed before, & which even now have no enforcement system. The recalls included bonemeal products using cowparts, & also soaps. One federal inspector said that there were so many niche markets for the secondary leavings of diseased cattle that it was impossible to recall all of it. Several distributors of this deadly garbage "voluntarily" withdrew bonemeal & tallow products from the given time-period of BSE known to be in the product chain, but volunteering was just a trick to guarantee the government would not in the future harrass anyone with any new laws with teeth or enforcement of any kind. It remains a self-regulating industry, & cleaning up their act is strictly a matter of public relations.
-paghat the ratgirl
Bill is too!
On Fri, 28 May 2004 19:53:19 +0100, I found this from Janet Baraclough.. :
Once again your head is up your arse.
On Fri, 28 May 2004 15:38:50 -0700, I found this from snipped-for-privacy@netscape.net (paghat) :
According to my son, a medical microbiologist with a keen interest in BSE, your stuff is spot on. It is worth pointing out that a fairly tight cluster was discovered in and around a small village in Leicestershire. Research has been completed there but longitudinal research is I am told still in progress.
After the first published report of BSE was drawn to my attention, I think it was in The Veterinary Record in 1987, October 31, I may well be a bit out here, I stopped using bone meal and blood. Most of my rose growing buddies haven't used it now for years. The few who do only apply it in the rain and looking like space men! I did get a bit of a ribbing at the time, not know. I took quiet satisfaction in drawing their attention at the time to the case of the gardeners mentioned by paghat. If I recall rightly it was widely discussed at the time.
In reply to your question
I have to ask can we believe the newspapers these days?
Will
The message from snipped-for-privacy@netscape.net (paghat) contains these words:
Sorry, that's wrong. No such link has ever been made.
New-variant CJD in people is thought to incubate for years before showing symptoms. One of the first symptoms is mental deterioration. For those two reasons it would be impossible to verify in detail the entire meat-eating history of any victim and conclude that one particular brandname was the source of "most or all of the UK cases".
Not that I recall.
But public memory is short, & when a new Associated Press article
Surely you do not accept "press reports", or the Associated Press, as bastions of accredited research? Whose research was s/he quoting from?
IIRC only one person who died from CJD, was claimed to be a lifelong vegetarian. IOW others who were vegetarians at the time they developed symptoms, had earlier eaten meat.
I think it unlikely that any creditable scientist would consider that erstwhile carnivores had "NO other possible exposure" to infected prions other than bonemeal inhaled in the garden, given that it's now thought nv-CJd is medically transmissible between people.
Janet.
"Will" wrote
May I respectfully suggest, Will, that regardless of your son's opinion, a discussion of a disease acquired by eating at a restaurant is off-topic on a gardening newsgroup. The original question, whether bonemeal fertilizer is a threat, is more related, and as usual Paghat's response is fabricated nonsense.
The message from "Brian" contains these words:
Exactly.
Or via blood donations. In the UK, people who recieved a transfusion during the early 80s are banned from donating blood. Some countries no longer import any human blood products from the UK.
Janet
Actually it's dead-on on-topic that gardeners should know the evidence of four out of 50 deaths effected gardeners through use of bonemeal, the rest through eating at Mcdonalds. Those are FACTS and only blind-with-head-in-shit-pile fools won't even consider the facts of the matter. It's also dead-on on-topic that the Royal Horticultural Society recommends never using bone or blood meal without wearing a mask because of the risk of BSE exposure. Even the type of head-in-shitpile fool who won't believe in reality should be able to tell that's on-topic.
Your pal, paghat the ratgirl
On Sat, 29 May 2004 22:46:55 +0100, I found this from Janet Baraclough.. :
So the animal products are now in the clear. Blood transfusion and instruments are now responsible. And of course scientific sources are impecable, truthful and honest. They don't indulge in spin. Who pays the piper.....
Nothing is 'in the clear'. Potential avenues of infection are all under investigation to avoid further contamination. The only recent conclusion is that animal products might not be/have been the only method of infection. Or even at all. Brian.
Actually there is no such journal of any so-called "West of England Medical School, May 2004" & that isn't even the name of Department of Health & Social Care at the University of the West of England, Bristol. The citation was incomplete because entirely bogus. Brian's fake citation is either misremembered hearsay, or he just made it up. And the University of the West of England doesn't even have fascilities for the study of BSE/mad cow, though that school has many experts in economics of cattle agriculture, and has been involved in longterm studies of safer cattle farming techniques funded by the beef industry.
The claim that prion-infected meat & meat byproducts are in the clear is just wacky. The journey of these prions from infected sheep, to rendering plant cattle feeds, to cattle, to humans is not in debate. How original infections are passed between ruminants, however, is still an unknown process. But BSE (Bovine spongiform encephalopathy) & CJD ( Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease) in humans have repeatedly been shown to have the same causitive agent, a prion that is not damaged even by high temperatures & survives any degree of meat processing or byproduct rendering.
There is a separate form of CJD called "sporadic CJD" which might not be connected to beef & beef byproducts. A meat-industry propoganda campaigne attempted to misuse information about sporadic CJD as evidence that beef didn't cause the sudden rash of cases in humans. No science supports the cluster of red herrings & half-truths the meat industry put out there. And though the University of the West of England does a lot of work for the beef industry, I do not believe the fake citation has any basis in reality, the Bristol test farms being aimed at healthier farm practices rather than participation in the propoganda blitz on both sides of the Atlantic.
The key source of misinformation on the web is the anti-consumer industry-sponsored & misleadingly named Center for Consumer Freedom. It was founded as a front group for the restaurant, alcohol, & tobacco industries, but in the last few years been well funded additionally by the beef industry. They oppose anything that makes meat, fast food, or alcohol look bad, & have served as attack-dogs equally against activists & scientists. In a May 11, 2002 San Francisco Chronicle article, Center for Consumer Freedom spokesman John Doyle was actually cajoled by a reporter into this amazing confession: " our enemies are just about every consumer & environmental group, chef, legislator or doctor who raises objections to things like pesticide use, genetic engineering of crops or antibiotic use in beef and poultry." The CCF claims "reputable scientists" have proven beef is not involved in human infection -- but no scientists are named. Here's a synopsis of the pure-propoganda all-the-time "take" paid for by the beef industry to a PR group pretending to be a consumer organization:
They never provide any sources for these extreme minority opinions of beef never having caused this disease in humans, & nobody who is not a lunatic with some of their brain cells already spongiformed could seriously fall for it.
-paghat the ratgirl
-paghat the ratgirl
________________________________
The above was headlined in all the National Press and was extracted from appropriate publications ~this month. The research is totally available. The Medical School is Plymouth/Exeter based and highly regarded though relatively recently founded. However, their research has been ongoing for many years. Our daughter was involved with the team. Google should be able to give the details more precisely.
We can only hope that they search for a means of eliminating T-AVD. Those infected with this form of Verbal Diarrhoea are only found Trans-Atlantic and might find a simpleton to believe them. I would personally prescribe Grammoxone~ even though it is a fairly painless termination. Brian.
The message from snipped-for-privacy@netscape.net (paghat) contains these words:
No, they are garbled nonsense, for which you have failed to provide any evidence of scientific research. Sorry, American newspaper reports don't count.
Janet.
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