ATKINS WAS OBESE, HAD HEART DISEASE

Gosh, is Mayor Bloomberg gonna get an apology now? Atkins wasn't just "fat," he was "obese" (258 lbs.) by the time he died, according to the medical examiner's report upon his death. Atkins-olytes are trying to spin it that he "gained more than 60 pounds through fluid retention in the eight days he spent in a coma," and that he only weighed 195 when admitted. Guess it's possible, but even if that were true, 195 is "overweight," which is a nice way of saying what Bloomberg said: Fat.

UPDATE 2/11: An Australian paper's priceless hed (if you're familiar with Gary Taubes): DIET GURU BIG FAT LIAR

MAD COW TEST LAB COVERING UP MORE CASES?

Again pushing the envelope of the Mad Cow story, UPI's Steve Mitchell reports that the single lab in Ames, Iowa that does all the USDA's BSE testing "has a history of producing ambiguous and conflicting results" according to disillusioned USDA veterinarians, and "has been so secretive some suspect it is covering up additional mad cow cases." Most of the vets, of course, are unnamed, though one who is named confirms that "There's definitely issues" with the validity of NVSL test results, and recounts a couple of odd, disconcerting incidents. It could all be a fantastical coincidence, I guess, but it seems like the USDA has just about used up their quota of those.

ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS... WELL,...

USDA Concludes Mad Cow Search. Yep, they found all the other cows that were at risk. Or, at least, well, 14 of the 25 that definitely ate the same feed that gave December's Mad Cow the disease. And a whopping 29 out of 81 from that farm, all of which the agency was searching for. And see, "Some may have gone to slaughter, but BSE tests would have spotted any that had mad cow," Ron De Haven said. Sure they would've - if all Mad Cows are downers, right?

UPDATE 2/10: "The investigation is not completed, it just failed" - that's one guy's opinion, of course. Unfortunately, that one guy is Tadashi Sato, agricultural attache at the Japanese Embassy.
UPDATE 2/11: There's another guy who thinks the investigation is incomplete - Tom Daschle, who wants the search reopened. "In comments on the Senate floor, Daschle blamed pressure from meatpackers and the cattle industry for the government's decision to close its investigation on Monday." Really. Huh.

CAN YOU SAY "1918"?

Two more people have died in Vietnam of bird flu, taking Asia's death toll to 18, as new tests show that the virus may have spread to pigs," reports the Telegraph. "The finding is alarming because pigs can become a 'mixing vessel' for the flu virus. The immune system of pigs is similar to that of humans and the animals suffer from a wide variety of diseases that also infect people." Hmmmmm... bird flu infecting pigs, who pass it on to humans... why does that sound so familiar?

COGNIGITIVE DISSONANCE

This one may not last long, but check out Yahoo's Mad Cow page for these two consecutive headlines:

Bush Admin Sees Little Risk of More Mad Cow Cases - Reuters via Yahoo! News (Feb 5, 2004)

More U.S. Cattle Likely To Have Mad Cow Disease - at Washington Post (Feb 5, 2004)

Whole story in a nutshell...

USDA- APPOINTED EXPERTS: MORE MAD COW IN U.S.

A panel of international experts appointed by Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman said this morning that there's a "high probability'' of more cases of mad cow disease in American cattle. Urlich Kihm, the panel's chairman, told USDA officials that in the future, the United States "could have a case a month'' of mad cow disease. This would not be anywhere near the level of outbreak in Britain, but now everybody who eats a burger in America should rightly wonder, "Is this month... my month?"

GRAPEFRUIT CAN SHED POUNDS - UNLESS YOU'RE ON ATKINS

A new study found that adding grapefruit to meals resulted in weight loss: Those who added a half grapefruit to each meal or drank a cup of grapefruit juice before each meal shed about seven times as much weight as those who didn't. Great news!... oh, unless you're on the Atkins diet, where even if you ate nothing but the grapefruit, you'd far exceed the 20 allowable grams of carbs for one day in the weight-loss stage. Awww.

LOUTHAN: 'SMOKING GUN' PROVES COW WAS NO DOWNER

Dave Louthan's story, that the Mad Cow was not a 'downer' until he shot it, has been picked up by the New York Times, which provides this interesting additional tidbit: "The 'smoking gun,' he said, is that it is the only one on the page marked 'unable to get temp' while other cows' temperatures were recorded. It is easy, he said, to get a rectal temperature from a downed cow but hard from a jumpy one." The USDA's story is that "the animal was lying so close to the trailer wall that a thermometer could not be used," so they're not gonna be able to finesse this one. Somebody's outright lying - let's see if the press corps cares enough to find out.
UPDATE 2/4: Louthan isn't going away - the story of his Washington state testimony is now in most papers. No new bombshells, but I loved this detail: "[USDA spokesman Steven] Cohen was unsure whether Louthan indeed killed the cow in question. No one answered the telephone at Vern's Moses Lake Meat Co. on Tuesday and Louthan's claims could not be confirmed." Gee, fellas, maybe if you'd been reading Meat Facts, you'd know that Louthan's story has already been confirmed by the plant manager and the USDA itself.
PLUS: In this version, Louthan provides "a glimpse of the gory details that he said otherwise are being missed, [such as] cows being dragged and dumped by tractors, suffering numerous abrasions and at times having their limbs torn off before they are killed. 'If you did that to a horse or a dog, they would throw you in jail,' said Louthan." Hey, good point.

A MODEST PROPOSAL

Yes, I'm using the phrase ironically, because this really is a modest propsal - modest in this case being a synonym for "mealy-mouthed" or "lily-livered." Newsday lays out the facts, still unkown to most Americans, that poisons accumulate heavily in animal fat (in addition to the presence of high-profile diseases), then wonders what can be done. The strongest advice is to "Have an occasional meal from lower on the food chain." Then, as an alternative to "farmed salmon, which is rich in heart healthy omega-3 fatty acids," no plant foods that are rich in heart healthy omega-3 fatty acids are mentioned. Hmmm. Guess they don't exist. So the long and the short of it: Don't eat so much unnecessary poison, but be sure to still eat a lot.

BIRD FLU GOES PERSON-TO-PERSON?

"Human-to-human transmission of avian influenza is 'one possible explanation' for how a family attending a wedding in Vietnam last month was struck by the viral respiratory disease. If additional studies confirm the latest explanation, it would be the first known case of human-to-human transmission of the virus during the current outbreak of avian influenza, or bird flu, that has affected 10 Asian countries," according to The Straits Times.

LISTERIA, SALMONELLA DEMAND EQUAL TIME

Remember the stories shortly after the Mad Cow was found, saying "don't worry 'bout BSE - ordinary foodborne diseases are bigger threats!"? This is called a "false dichotomy" - it's not as though they're mutually exclusive or anything, as continued meat recalls show. In traditional Friday-recall mode, the USDA chose today to announce that the CDC is investigating an outbreak of 37 cases of salmonella linked to ground beef. And our own NBC10 reported Thursday that a local company recalling about 52,000 pounds - that's right, 26 tons - of lunch meat may have sold listeria-contaminated cold cuts to local grocery stores and delis. The meat was distributed throughout the eastern portion of the US, and "it's possible that some of that specific product code of meat was sold to our local supermarkets," said Bruce Belack, company vice president of sales at Vincent Giordano Corp. What!!?? Vince Giordano? Say it ain't so, Vince!

TESTING, TESTING

Testing has shown that 20 cows killed Saturday at a Boardman dairy were not infected with mad cow disease, agriculture officials said Thursday. That's great. No, really, it is. But here's the interesting thing:

Saturday = Jan. 24.

Thursday = Jan. 29.

Five days from killing to announcement of test results. So how come the one killed on 12/9 took nearly THREE TIMES that long before results were announced the night before Christmas Eve? Hmmm....

WIPING OUT SPECIES FOR CHEAPER MEAT?

A mysterious and precipitous plunge in the number of vultures in South Asia, which has pushed three species to the brink of extinction, is probably a result of inadvertent poisoning by a drug used widely in livestock to relieve fever and lameness, scientists reported yesterday in the journal Nature. Studies in Pakistan showed that the drug, diclofenac, caused acute kidney failure in vultures when they ate the carcasses of animals that had recently been treated with it. "I think what it actually says is that we really need to look systematically at the use of pharmaceuticals for veterinary purposes," said Thomas E. Lovejoy, president of the H. John Heinz III Center for Science, Economics and the Environment.

LET THEM EAT BLOOD -- CANADA

Despite the belated common-sense approach of the US in banning the feeding of cow blood to cows, Canada is not buying in, saying they don't think it's so risky. This, of course, makes the whole US ban virtually meaningless, unless we're going to close the US/Canadian border not only to cows but to feed of all kinds. Hey, the way things are going, you can't rule anything out.

FIRST, LET'S KILL ALL THE ANIMALS

As zoonotic diseases continue to rage across the ocean, the obvious problem and known cause - intensive animal agriculture - continues to be ignored while the preferred solution is killing and more killing. But some are suggesting this may do more harm than good. The Washington Post reports that health and agriculture officials are warning that the mass slaughter of chickens could inadvertently help turn the virus into a form far more threatening to humans. U.N. officials "say the contact between poultry and the people killing them poses a risk by creating more chances for avian influenza to hijack genes from ordinary human flu." Meanwhile, in the International Herald Tribune, Steven E. Sanderson says Killing civet cats is not the way to fight SARS: "Killing the messenger - literally - is not going to eliminate the need for a real health care plan for all the inhabitants of this planet. The time has long passed when we can ignore the connection between human health and wildlife health."

MORE MAD COW SHENANIGANS

Yesterday, while the FDA put in place the long-awaited (and even longer-demanded) ban on cow blood in cattle feed, the USDA announced that it was pretty much giving up on finding out where any of the other cows went that ate the same contaminated feed as the one found in Washington. Yep, that's right, just giving up. Even though they're pretty sure, according to USDA's Ron DeHaven, that "many have already been slaughtered." And after that, who cares? It's not as if the people who ate them will show symptoms any time during the current election cycle, is it?

This morning, the Wall Street Journal (again with the America-hating from the WSJ!) reported that the Commodity Futures Exchange Commission is investigating possible insider-trading in the days before the finding of Mad Cow was announced. Apparently I'm not the only one who finds it remarkable that it took so long to come out with that news after the animal was tested.

UPDATE 1/29: More America-haters: SF Examiner: Mad cow safety measures not nearly enough and USA Today: Tighter U.S. beef regulations still too lax for comfort, which says "The new rules overlook two critical ways mad cow disease still can spread: 1) By feeding cattle parts to other animals. 2) By feeding other animal parts to cattle."

USDA: MAD COW WAS WASN'T A DOWNER

Yesterday, an unidentified USDA official told a Washington state TV station that the Mad Cow was, in fact, a downer, and Dave Louthan was wrong. Today, though, the Columnbia Basin Herald quotes a named USDA official, Nolan Lemon, as acknowledging that it was not, in fact, a downer. Referring to Louthan's version of events, "Lemon said this case proved the system does work. The cow in question was flagged because of its odd behavior, such as running around in its pen, he said. 'At the end of the day, the surveillance system worked. We did find that one-in-a-million case,' he said. Lemon added that the cow was probably marked as a downer by a veterinarian so as to alert authorities that it needed to be tested." Uh...huh. So it wasn't a downer, but was incorrectly marked as a downer because that was the only way to get it tested? Now there's a failsafe system.
UPDATE 1/28: Dave Louthan continues to make trouble for the USDA, proclaiming that slaughtering processes render muscle meat from BSE cows unsafe: He says "a band saw cuts right down the exact center of the spine, cutting the spinal cord in half the long way. There are hot water jets spraying on the blade at the guides to clean off the fat, blood and bone dust. As the blade cuts down through the spinal cords, little bits are torn out and mix with this hot water slurry, which runs all over the beef inside and out, totally contaminating the meat." But a USDA spokesman pooh-poohs the idea that an actual slaughterhouse worker would know what was going on with the different parts of the cow being slaughtered. The official assures us that "in some meat plants the spine is removed," but then is not certain of the procedures at the plant where the Mad Cow actually was slaughtered. Oh, OK.

WHO: BIRD FLU COULD KILL MILLIONS

That's the opinion of Dr Shigeru Omi, director of the WHO's Western Pacific office, who said that if the current drug-resistant Bird Flu strain afflicting Pacific Rim countries (and spreading) combines with another flu that's moving that way, "there is always potential that this kind of outbreak will result in serious global pandemic, which will involve not just hundreds, but will kill millions of people globally." Well, yeah, but chicken is just so tasty, ya know?

STUDY LINKS HIGH-CARBS AND WEIGHT LOSS

I'm sorry, I didn't quite hear you - what was that again? Oh yeah: Study Links High-Carbs and Weight Loss. Yes, once again a low-fat diet enables you to lose weight - if, as this one, it's mostly vegetarian. Funny to hear the fulminating against this notion of expending more calories while taking in the same amount - when that's exactly what Atkins has been claiming for at least three years. I dunno if it's true or not, or if it's really possible or not - but this study shows how easy the proof is to come by, either way.

MORE TROUBLE IN COWLAND

While Wyoming ranchers have found even more to worry about as Brucellosis (which can sicken humans as well as cows) spreads in their state, the national Mad Cow crisis is bringing out even more unsettling facts about the USDA's mismanagement of the cattle industry - and its effects on Americans' safety.

A Sacramento Bee columnist decries the situation in California, where county health officials are forbidden from telling the public which stores sold meat from Washington's Mad Cow. Alameda County Public Health Officer Anthony Iton says "I was shocked. Here was critical public health information that I could get only if I signed a blood-oath not to give it to the public. That's what I do for a living. It doesn't make any sense." Columnist Marjie Lundstrom sums it up: "What it means is that you and I are clueless, cut out of the knowledge loop and left on our own to sort it out. Why? Because the federal government wants this kept secret. Because the USDA seems to think it's more important to coddle the meat industry and strong-arm disclosure-minded states than to give consumers basic health information. A Hartford Advocate columnist goes further: "If you're still eating American beef at this point, you're more optimistic than most of the rest of us. No one else on the planet is eating American beef. Surely you don't feel consoled by reassurances from Ann "Steak for Christmas!" Veneman, Bush's agriculture secretary. Come on. This is the same crew who said Saddam had "yellow cake," then said he had anthrax, then smallpox, then ... ad nauseum. ... You don't think other cows that have since entered the food chain had mad cow prions coursing through their cells? Do you still believe in the tooth fairy too?"

This would probably all seem like so much grandstanding if it weren't for a few troubling facts: One is a scientist opining that, due to the mysteries of how BSE works, "A negative test won't always mean a negative cow." Another is the fact that even if "99.9% of US feed mills are complying with FDA regulations," feed contaminated with bovine proteins is "inexplicably" entering the country from Canada, in violation of trade law. Shocking? Well, there's also this: Three more CJD cases have just been found in the same area of New Jersey where one citizen has been agitating for years for the CDC to investigate a possible cluster, and finally the CDC announced that they will investigate the cluster.

UPDATE 1/24: Another CJD cluster on the other coast has survivors there wondering about a BSE link and another U.S. state has problems with bovine-protein-contaminated feed. Something's spreading, anyway...
UPDATE 1/29: Another confirmed CJD case for the Cherry Hill cluster centering around the Garden State Racetrack: Former Camden city councilman Alfred Palumbo died Dec. 27, 1997, of what his doctors diagnosed as Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, or CJD, his daughter-in-law Gina Palumbo said Tuesday after reading an earlier report about the cluster. OK, now will you get your ass in gear, CDC?