Mad cow disease changed the diet of the Galician wolf

Date:October 7, 2015

Source:Plataforma SINC

The Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease crisis in Europe was a turning point for the diet of the Galician wolf, which until the year 2000 had primarily fed on the carrion of domestic animals. A new study shows that, after European health regulations made it illegal to abandon dead livestock, wolves started to consume more wild boars, roe deer and wild ponies, but also began to attack more cattle ranches when faced with food shortages in certain areas.

With the arrival of bovine spongiform encephalopathy -- commonly known as mad cow disease -- in Europe, the European Community had to enforce a number of laws in the year 2000 in order to prevent the disease from spreading. Among other things, it became illegal to abandon the carcasses of ruminants that had died on farms; up until then, this had been an important food source for wolves.

From then on, having been adopted by every European country, this measure began to affect a number of scavenger species, especially the vultures that lived on the Iberian Peninsula. But they weren't the only victims; the Iberian wolf (Canis lupus signatus) was also affected.

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Targeted Culling of Deer Controls Disease With Little Effect On Hunting

Oct. 21, 2013 — Chronic wasting disease, the deer-equivalent of mad cow disease, has crept across the U.S. landscape from west to east. It appeared first in captive mule deer in Colorado in the late 1960s. By 1981, it had escaped to the wild. It reached the Midwest by 2002. Little is known about its potential to infect humans.

The effort to keep chronic wasting disease in check in Illinois is a success, report researchers Nohra Mateus-Pinilla, left, a wildlife veterinary epidemiologist with the Illinois Natural History Survey; U. of I. animal sciences professor Jan Novakofski; and postdoctoral researcher Michelle Green.

Now researchers at the University of Illinois offer a first look at the long-term effectiveness of the practice of culling deer in areas affected by CWD to keep the disease in check. Their study appears in the journalPreventive Veterinary Medicine.

Each year, the Illinois Department of Natural Resources tests 7,000 (hunted, culled or incidentally killed) deer for CWD infection, conducts aerial surveillance to see where deer congregate and sends in sharpshooters to cull deer at the sites with disease, said Jan Novakofski, a professor of animal sciences at the University of Illinois and an author of the study.

"We know a lot about how far deer typically move," he said. "If they're sick, they're going to spread the disease that far. So if you find a deer that's sick, you draw that small circle and you shoot there."

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Analysis: U.S. mad cow find: lucky break or triumph of science?

By Charles Abbott

WASHINGTON, Apr. 25, 2012 (Reuters) — The discovery this week of the fourth U.S. case of mad cow disease was one of two things for food safety experts: a validation of a decade-long focused surveillance regime or a lucky break that highlights the need to revisit previously scrapped efforts for more comprehensive surveillance.

For now, calls for greater monitoring seem likely to go unheard, both because the "atypical" case appeared to be a one-in-a-million genetic mutation that officials said posed no threat to the food supply, and because of tightening budgets.

Funding for cattle health programs in the proposed 2013 budget is set to fall by 20 percent compared to two years earlier.

Discovery of the infected dairy cow at a rendering plant in central California may stoke an intensifying debate over food safety in the United States, already a major topic after the "pink slime" furor this spring, fungicide-tainted orange juice from Brazil and never-ending efforts to control disease in food caused by salmonella and e Coli bacteria.

While major importers from Japan to Canada pledged to maintain beef shipments and U.S. officials stressed that the "atypical" case had occurred in the cow spontaneously and was not in others animals, critics were quick to respond.

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USDA says Holstein in Calif. mad cow case was euthanized after becoming lame, lying down

SAN FRANCISCO — The California dairy cow found to have mad cow disease had been euthanized after it became lame and started lying down, federal officials revealed in their latest update on the discovery.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture also said Thursday that the animal was 10 years and seven months old.

A spokesman for U.S. Rep. Devin Nunes of California had said Wednesday that the sick cow was 5 years old. It came from a dairy farm in Tulare County, the nation’s No. 1 dairy-producing county.

The USDA didn’t elaborate on the cow’s symptoms other than to say it was “humanely euthanized after it developed lameness and became recumbent.” Outward signs of the disease can include unsteadiness and incoordination.

Routine testing at a transfer facility showed the dead Holstein, which was destined for a rendering plant, had mad cow disease, or bovine spongiform encephalopathy. The results were announced Tuesday. It was the fourth case of mad cow disease ever discovered in the U.S.

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Mad Cow Disease Confirmed In California Dairy Cow, USDA Says

The USDA has confirmed that a case of mad cow disease was found in a California dairy cow. It is the fourth case of mad cow, or bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), found in U.S. cattle since the first in December 2003. Los Angeles-based Baker Commodities confirmed that the cow was discovered in a Hanford, Calif. transfer station after workers selected the cow for random sampling. The company does not yet know which farm the cow came from.

USDA Chief Veterinary Officer John Clifford said Tuesday afternoon that the cow did not enter the human food chain and that all U.S. meat and dairy supplies are safe. Further mitigating the risk to the public, milk does not transmit BSE.

According to the USDA, the animal's carcass is being held under state authority at a California rendering facility and will be destroyed. "It was never presented for slaughter for human consumption, so at no time presented a risk to the food supply or human health," Clifford said.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/24/mad-cow-disease-california-usda_n_1449871.html?ref=mostpopular