The Farm Crisis in the livestock sector

[Alberta farmer]

The National Farmers Union in Canada has a good write up on this subject. The graphs and figures clearly show how this situation came about in Canada and the US. NAFTA, packer and retail concentration, and captive supply have driven our prices lower than the Great Depression(adjusted for inflation).
They also propose some solutions, which I doubt are doable in Canada with the government/cattle organizations we have up here.
Actually in Canada we are fast moving toward one solution...reducing our cattle herd to a point where we will be only able to service the domestic market! The sad thing is we will probably fall far below the domestic market eventually and in will come the South American beef...thus finishing our cattle industry.
The same fate awaits the US cattleman, but maybe a few more years down the road?
According to the study the price for fat cattle(adjusted for inflation) should be $200/cwt to compare with the prices between WW11 and 1989! Cull cows should be $150/cwt based on the price of hamburger at the retail store!
The spread between hamburger and cull cows should be $1.10/lb. That is exactly the spread that operated between WW11 and 1990(adjusted for inflation). A 40 cent cow should equal $1.50 hamburger at Safeway...instead hamburger is close to $3.00! The extra profit goes directly into the packers/retailers pocket!

 

[Oldtimer]

The National Farmers Union in Canada has a good write up on this subject. The graphs and figures clearly show how this situation came about in Canada and the US. NAFTA, packer and retail concentration, and captive supply have driven our prices lower than the Great Depression(adjusted for inflation).
They also propose some solutions, which I doubt are doable in Canada with the government/cattle organizations we have up here.

Not sure if it will happen- but it is promising, for me anyway, to see our USDA and Justice Dept. finally using anti-trust laws to challenge the takeover by JBS Brazil of a major part of our feeding and packing industry... Maybe they are learning after all these bailouts of these "too big to allow fail" Corporations why these laws were put on the books.. :???:
Its also encouraging to see a new administration moving into D.C. that strongly supports M-COOL and the Packer Ban on Ownership of cattle (captive supply) and that has at least indicated a strong support of USA first and the need for us to get off our dependence on everything imported- and opposition to some of those one way trade agreements..

I guess we will have a better idea of where things will go when we get a new Secretary of Agriculture- but one thing that could really help the US market (and possibly Canadians if like normal their government would follow suit) is if the USDA drops their lawsuit and changes their direction on allowing those Packers like Creekstone to BSE test all beef... Then those countries like Korea and Japan- that want to send us all their products - wouldn't have a leg to stand on about why they refuse to take US (Canadian) beef....

 

[HerefordSire]

A consolidation of ranchers appears to be violently happening silently. I think North American ranchers need to buy all South American ranches and then raise prices. Then we could look at other countries. Of course, we could tell the American Feds we are going bankrupt to get the money, created from issuing new Treasuries to China and Japan.

 

[flounder]

REPORT ON CURRENT & FUTURE SURVEILLANCE FOR BOVINE SPONGIFORM ENCEPHALOPATHY


http://madcowtesting.blogspot.com/2008/ ... lance.html


Evaluation of the Human Transmission Risk of an Atypical Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy Prion Strain

Qingzhong Kong,1* Mengjie Zheng,1 Cristina Casalone,2 Liuting Qing,1 Shenghai Huang,1? Bikram Chakraborty,1 Ping Wang,1 Fusong Chen,1 Ignazio Cali,1 Cristiano Corona,2 Francesca Martucci,2 Barbara Iulini,2 Pierluigi Acutis,2 Lan Wang,1 Jingjing Liang,1 Meiling Wang,1 Xinyi Li,1 Salvatore Monaco,3 Gianluigi Zanusso,3 Wen-Quan Zou,1 Maria Caramelli,2 and Pierluigi Gambetti1*
Department of Pathology, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio 44106,1 CEA, Istituto Zooprofilattico Sperimentale, 10154 Torino, Italy,2 Department of Neurological and Visual Sciences, University of Verona, 37134 Verona, Italy3
*Corresponding author. Mailing address: Department of Pathology, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH 44106. Phone for Pierluigi Gambetti: (216) 368-0586. Fax: (216) 368-2546. E-mail: [email protected] . Phone for Qingzhong Kong: (216) 368-1756. Fax: (216) 368-2546. E-mail: [email protected]
?Present address: Department of Patient Education and Health Information, Cleveland Clinic Foundation, Cleveland, OH 44195.
Received November 30, 2007; Accepted January 16, 2008.

Bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), the prion disease in cattle, was widely believed to be caused by only one strain, BSE-C. BSE-C causes the fatal prion disease named new variant Creutzfeldt-Jacob disease in humans. Two atypical BSE strains, bovine amyloidotic spongiform encephalopathy (BASE, also named BSE-L) and BSE-H, have been discovered in several countries since 2004; their transmissibility and phenotypes in humans are unknown. We investigated the infectivity and human phenotype of BASE strains by inoculating transgenic (Tg) mice expressing the human prion protein with brain homogenates from two BASE strain-infected cattle. Sixty percent of the inoculated Tg mice became infected after 20 to 22 months of incubation, a transmission rate higher than those reported for BSE-C. A quarter of BASE strain-infected Tg mice, but none of the Tg mice infected with prions causing a sporadic human prion disease, showed the presence of pathogenic prion protein isoforms in the spleen, indicating that the BASE prion is intrinsically lymphotropic. The pathological prion protein isoforms in BASE strain-infected humanized Tg mouse brains are different from those from the original cattle BASE or sporadic human prion disease. Minimal brain spongiosis and long incubation times are observed for the BASE strain-infected Tg mice. These results suggest that in humans, the BASE strain is a more virulent BSE strain and likely lymphotropic.

http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articl ... id=2268471


Thursday, December 04, 2008 2:37 PM

"we have found that H-BSE can infect humans."

personal communication with Professor Kong. ...TSS



November 25, 2008

Update On Feed Enforcement Activities To Limit The Spread Of BSE

http://madcowfeed.blogspot.com/2008/11/ ... -feed.html



"the biochemical signature of PrPres in the BASE-inoculated animal was found to have a higher proteinase K sensitivity of the octa-repeat region. We found the same biochemical signature in three of four human patients with sporadic CJD and an MM type 2 PrP genotype who lived in the same country as the infected bovine."

just another one of those sporadic CJD coincidences i suppose $$$

NOT to forget ;

Thursday, June 05, 2008

Review on the epidemiology and dynamics of BSE epidemics

Vet. Res. (2008) 39:15 www.vetres.org DOI: 10.1051/vetres:2007053 c INRA, EDP Sciences, 2008 Review article

snip...

And last but not least, similarities of PrPres between Htype BSE and human prion diseases like CJD or GSS have been put forward [10], as well as between L-type BSE and CJD [17]. These findings raise questions about the origin and inter species transmission of these prion diseases that were discovered through the BSE active surveillance.

snip...

Cases of atypical BSE have only been found in countries having implemented large active surveillance programs. As of 1st September 2007, 36 cases (16 H, 20 L) have been described all over the world in cattle: Belgium (1 L) [23], Canada (1 H)15, Denmark (1 L)16, France (8 H, 6 L)17, Germany (1 H, 1 L) [13], Italy (3 L)18, Japan (1 L) [71], Netherlands (1 H, 2 L)19, Poland (1 H, 6 L)20, Sweden (1 H)21, United Kingdom (1 H)22, and USA (2 H)23. Another H-type case has been found in a 19 year old miniature zebu in a zoological park in Switzerland [56]. It is noteworthy that atypical cases have been found in countries that did not experience classical BSE so far, like Sweden, or in which only few cases of classical BSE have been found, like Canada or the USA.

And last but not least, similarities of PrPres between Htype BSE and human prion diseases like CJD or GSS have been put forward [10], as well as between L-type BSE and CJD [17]. These findings raise questions about the origin and inter species transmission of these prion diseases that were discovered through the BSE active surveillance.

full text 18 pages ;

http://www.vetres.org/index.php?option= ... v07232.pdf


please see full text ;

http://bse-atypical.blogspot.com/2008/0 ... cs-of.html

***Atypical forms of BSE have emerged which, although rare, appear to be more virulent than the classical BSE that causes vCJD.***

Progress Report from the National Prion Disease Pathology Surveillance Center

An Update from Stephen M. Sergay, MB, BCh & Pierluigi Gambetti, MD

April 3, 2008


http://www.aan.com/news/?event=read&art ... e=72.45.45



Sunday, March 16, 2008

MAD COW DISEASE terminology UK c-BSE (typical), atypical BSE H or L, and or Italian L-BASE

http://bse-atypical.blogspot.com/2008/0 ... c-bse.html



HUMAN and ANIMAL TSE Classifications i.e. mad cow disease and the UKBSEnvCJD only theory JUNE 2008

snip...

Tissue infectivity and strain typing of the many variants Manuscript of the human and animal TSEs are paramount in all variants of all TSE. There must be a proper classification that will differentiate between all these human TSE in order to do this. With the CDI and other more sensitive testing coming about, I only hope that my proposal will some day be taken seriously. ...

snip...

http://cjdmadcowbaseoct2007.blogspot.co ... ns-ie.html


Friday, December 05, 2008

Detection of Prion Infectivity in Fat Tissues of Scrapie-Infected Mice

http://scrapie-usa.blogspot.com/2008/12 ... n-fat.html


tss