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More recently, the shock-waves of the BSE debacle have rico- blanket-treating those herds with the same types of systemic OP cheted around the entire world. that had been used in Europe. It should be pointed out that the But despite the severity of the "mad cow" legacy, little genuine | USA wisely adopted a less toxic approach for dealing with their attempt has been made to crack the causal riddle of the disease, warbles, employing lower doses of non-systemic-acting insecti- thereby leaving us devoid of insight into measures that would best cides—e.g., insecticides which were not designed to penetrate cure, control and, better still, prevent it. through the skin—while only treating the individual cattle that This story shines a ray of light over the whole debacle. It charts were warble infested. my own ecodetective escapades and original field investigations I was a working dairy farmer with first-hand experience of BSE which ran in tandem with the laboratory quest of Cambridge erupting in cattle that had been purchased into my organic farm. University biochemist Dr David Brown. These combined works But I was struck by the fact that no cases of BSE had ever have gone some way towards unearthing the truth underpinning emerged in cows that had been born and raised on fully converted the original causes of this grotesque disease. organic farms, despite those cattle having been permitted access Hard scientific evidence has been amassed which indicates that to the feed that contained the incriminated meat and bone meal BSE and vCJD could both result from separate exposure of (MBM) ingredient as part of their 20% conventional feedstuff bovines and humans to the same package of toxic environmental allowance decreed in the organic standards at that time. factors—ferrimagnetic metals and low-frequency sonic shock— From then on, I became deeply sceptical of the conventional and not from the ingestion of infected bovine material. If such a consensus on the origins of BSE and its human equivalent, vCJD. polemical hypothesis continues to accumulate momentum, a radi- There were just too many radical flaws blighting the hypothesis cal upheaval of the status quo mindset can be expected. that bovine ingestion of micro doses of scrapie-contaminated But despite the conclusions of several field and laboratory stud- MBM led to BSE. Equally flawed was the follow-up theory that ies providing strong support for the environmental hypothesis, the | human ingestion of BSE-contaminated beef caused vCJD. resulting publications have been dis- The "hyperinfection hysterics" had missed outright by the UK govern- based their hypothesis upon the notion ment. Furthermore, contrary to the that TSEs could be transmitted via positive recommendations of the UK injections of TSE-diseased brain tis- 2000 BSE Inquiry and EU l was struck by the fact that no sues into unfortunate laboratory ani- Commission BSE reports in respect cases of BSE had ever emerged mals. Yet various other neurodegen- of funding research into this theory, 4 erative diseases, such as familial the UK government's irrational rejec- In COWS that had been born Alzheimer's disease, have been trans- tion of grant proposals—including and raised on fully converted mitted in this way. ; ; one submission aimed at developing . So why is nobody freaking out a feasible cure for vCJD—continues organic farms. about Alzheimer's disease? to the present day. The Flaws in the Conventional The Lone Voyager Hypothesis My work first came to the fore 1. Thousands of tonnes of the BSE- after I successfully quashed the UK government's compulsory incriminated meat and bone meal feed was exported as cattle feed warble fly eradication regime in the High Court of London in during the 1970s/1980s/1990s to countries and regions that have 1984. This exempted my farming business from treating our remained BSE free to date—e.g., South Africa, Sweden, Eastern dairy herd with a systemic organo-dithiophosphorus (OP) insecti- Europe, Middle East, India, Third World, etc. cide—a toxic chemical which, amongst myriad toxicological 2. Relaxation of the temperature standards and manufacturing effects, can chelate copper and open up the blood-brain barrier, techniques in the MBM rendering process in the UK was blamed thereby disturbing the overall crucial balance of metals in the for permitting the survival of the scrapie agent in sheep brain brain. material, thereby enabling the "agent" to jump across into cattle, I was therefore not surprised to witness BSE rearing its ugly producing BSE. But none of these alterations was exclusive to head in the UK cattle herd in 1985. In my opinion, it was a direct the UK rendering plants. For instance, other scrapie-endemic legacy of the UK government's compulsory warble fly eradication _ places such as the USA and the Scandinavian countries had adopt- campaign—a 1982 measure that enforced the exclusive twice- ed the same continuous flow system of rendering five years before annual high-concentration application of systemic-acting OP the UK did, yet these countries have remained BSE free. insecticide. Furthermore, the pathogenic "infectious" capacity of the scrapie As considerably smaller outbreaks of BSE began to erupt across agent remains active after heating to temperatures in excess of other European countries and later in Japan, my investigations 500 degrees—way above the 150-degree temperatures employed revealed the voluntary usage of the same types of systemic insec- in the supposedly "safe" rendering processes operating in pre-BSE ticide in those countries—albeit at half the dose rates as applied in — days. the UK. These European outbreaks seemed to follow an EU cam- 3. Several abhorrent live-animal trials in the USA failed to paign, known as COST 811, which was aimed at purging the induce BSE in cattle after feeding/injecting them with massive remaining bastions of warble infestation on the European main- doses of scrapie-contaminated brain tissue. land—in countries where outbreaks continued because their 4. Forty thousand-plus cows that were born after the UK's respective authorities had adopted a more laid-back, voluntary 1988 ban on MBM incorporation into cattle feed have still devel- approach towards control of warbles. oped BSE. In warble-free Japan, the BSE cases emerged in the specific 5. Several countries such as Ireland, Portugal and France wit- herds which had imported breeding cattle from warble-infested nessed a greater number of BSE cases in cows born after their North America; and so the Japanese took preventive measures by _ respective bans on MBM than in cows born before the bans. | was struck by the fact that no cases of BSE had ever emerged _----- aba and raised on fully converted organic farms. 26 = NEXUS APRIL — MAY 2003 in cows that had been born www.nexusmagazine.com