Note - As I and Dr. Patricia Doyle, PhD have been warning for 10 years, BSE Mad Cow disease is reasonably common in US beef and dairy cattle. It is in our food and it is most certainly our pet foods. This FDA ruling simply confirms what we have been saying. Until a couple of years ago, the USDA was checking about 23,000 cattle for mad cow out of 32 MILLION slaughtered and eaten each year in the US. That figure of 23,000 has been dropped by the USDA to only 2,300 per year out of 32 million. In other words: don't look...don't find. A number of years back, many veterinarians in the US began to notice that dogs...and to a lesser degree cats...were dying too soon. Many of these animals were tagged with the mystery diagnosis of 'CCD'...for Canine Cognitive Disorder. Ergo, the feeding of BSE cattle brains, spinal columns and beef in general in pet foods was showing up as full-blown mad cow disease in pets. The problem has gotten to be so bad now that the FDA has finally been forced to act. Little consolation for the countless pet owners who have had to watch their pets die tragically. - Jeff Rense (NaturalNews) -- Effective April 23, 2009, the FDA has banned a series of cattle products from all animal feed and pet food in attempt to prevent the spread of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), also known as mad cow disease. BSE is a fatal, degenerative disease of the brain cause by defective proteins known as prions. These prions can be acquired by consuming the flesh of infected animals and lead to a similarly fatal human version of the disease, known as variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease. Federal regulations already prohibit using ruminant protein as part of the feed given to other ruminants. These measures were instituted in the United States and Canada in 1997, after a mad cow outbreak in the United Kingdom. Ruminants are animals that chew their cud, such as cows, sheep and goats. Other U.S. protections against mad cow disease include a partial ban on slaughtering cattle that cannot stand, which are more likely to be infected with BSE, and a requirement that meatpackers remove the spine and brain from all slaughtered animals. (Ridiculously ineffective - JR) These are the body parts most likely to carry mad-cow-causing prions. (BS...it has been found is all parts of the infected cows. - JR) The new regulations expand these rules in an attempt to keep BSE prions out of any animal feed, out of awareness that ruminant and non-ruminant feed might contaminate each other during the manufacturing or transport processes, or that ruminants might accidentally be given the wrong kind of feed. Any animal feed will now be prohibited from containing any materials from a BSE-infected animal; the brain or spinal cord of any cattle aged 30 months or older; materials from any cattle that are aged 30 months or older, have not had their spinal cords removed and have not been inspected and approved for human consumption; tallow containing more than 0.15 percent insoluble purities, or that has been derived from any other prohibited materials; and mechanically separated beef derived from any other prohibited materials. (More absurd 'regulations'. There are so many BSE downer cows killed and processed in the US each year, it's a joke. And the joke's on us, as always. - JR) Patricia A. Doyle DVM, PhD Bus Admin, Tropical Agricultural Economics Univ of West Indies Please visit my "Emerging Diseases" message board at: http://www.emergingdisease.org/phpbb/index.php Also my new website: http://drpdoyle.tripod.com/ Zhan le Devlesa tai sastimasa Go with God and in Good Health

