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Creating Prion-Free Cows
Science Daily is reporting that the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Agricultural Research Service (ARS) is reporting positive results from a recent study designed to create genetically engineered prion-free cattle. From the article: "ARS studied eight Holstein males that were developed by Hematech Inc., a pharmaceutical research company based in Sioux Falls, S.D. The evaluation of the prion-free cattle was led by veterinary medical officer Juergen Richt of ARS' National Animal Disease Center (NADC) in Ames, Iowa. The evaluation revealed no apparent developmental abnormalities in the prion-free cattle."
In 2005 a controversial paper in The Lancet introduced a theory that BSE might have originated in British cattle when they ate imported animal feed that included infected human remains from Hindu funeral ceremonies in India.
Bovine spongiform encephalopathy
This theory has some merit because scrapie from sheep does not appear to infect people, whereas BSE from cattle does.
Reduce, reuse, cycle
So how long until we get a new study that says Prions were indeed good things, and should have been left in our meat.
From TFA: "Prions are proteins that are naturally produced in animals."
Hmm... Removing natural things... Nope, doesn't sound like a good idea to me. I just can't wait until they find out that Prions actually helped prevent cancer or something and everyone on the planet now has a timebomb in their body.
Seriously, they'd better do some SERIOUS studies on this before feeding this crap to me.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
If that does not sound like wishful thinking, I don't know what does. Also keep in mind that they have a really strong interest in not finding anything....
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Yes, but the Finns have a government that serves the people.
s ive+in+Finland+by+European+standards/1076153030941 ), and given the fact that 'Mad Cow' disease is so astronomically unlikely to infect anyone when absolutly no precautions are being taken, any reasonable person has to question the cost/value of food paranoia.
Given the fact that Finns pay (on average) 22% more for food than the EU average ( http://www.hs.fi/english/article/Food+still+expen
I would say Finns requiring test for Mad Cow to be more about protectionism (it is against trade rules to outright ban foriegn beef, but if you require very specific and expensive testing on beef that isn't harmonized with other countries, and then subsidize the testing for domestic producers, you can essentially sidestep trade rules).
"What is Internet Explorer 7? Are you saying we can't access the normal internet?" - I love tech support. Really.
Agriculturalism leads to overpopulation, disease, and eventually famine. Technically speaking, we'd be more in balance with nature as hunter/gatherer. I suppose that's too anti-evolution for you though.
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The first test working on live animal has been developped in Göttingen, Germany. Thus sadly, the information is only available in the German version of wikipedia. (Though the german article mentions a later Texan discovery). My German is not strong, though I was able to get some information out of it (babelfish helped as well); these are interesting developments. Earlier in the wiki it states that Prionen cannot be proved until around 24-30 months of age and the test is 89% accurate with no false positives (quite good). My only concern is that in terms of the article, assuring the animals are clear of BSE could take a few years (24-30 months) and only IF they have been properly exposed to the BSE source (IE. They would have normally been infected).
Proof by very large bribes. QED.
Carnivores are more expensive to raise in terms of calories than herbivores...Those cows that you have to feed and water then get fed to the tigers or whatever that you're raising for meat.
Most efficient food is vegetable mass. Second most efficient is things that live on vegetable mass. Last comes things that eat things that live on vegetable mass.
On top of that, even if you could solve the problem of food efficiency, it would be extremely difficult to raise them efficiently, as carnivores are usually solitary or semi-solitary in organization. You'd have to keep them isolated from each other or they'd kill each other in response to territorial instincts.
Finally, raising food that would think of you as food is problematic. If a cow escapes from a cattle farm, it's probably not going to be a threat to nearby people, while a farm-raised carnivore is bound to be seriously feral and potentially very aggressive.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
Ok, so BSE damages prions which leads to all the characteristics of the disease. No prions, no disease. But does that necessarily mean no infection?
BSE can be passed to humans. Is it possible that these genetically modified cows are just modern day Typhoid Marys?
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