Beef 100% safe despite media fear mongering - What is the risk of an Australian consumer eating imported beef which is infected with BSE?
Answer - Non-existent.
You will never see European or American and Canadian beef on the suprmrket shelves of Australia, because the price in Australia is far to low. A 500 kilo steer in Australia can be bought for under AU$1,000, while a steer of similar weight in the EU is making over AU$2,000 and a similar price in the USA.
So what is all the fuss about meat imports, the answer is bull shit nothing more and nothing less.
The opposition see a chance to woe the farming community by a bit of fear mongering, while the radicals in the beef industry, are using the BSE as a weapon to promote quite a different agenda.
Every man and his dog has jumped on the bandwagon to promote their own self interest, the tradgedy is they are throwing out the baby with the bath water as well as doing untold damage to the beef industry.
Before you read on, remember this there has never been a link proved between BSE in cattle and humans.
The present controls in Europe and the USA, were put in place by politicians to appease angry voters and for no other reason.
You will not read this in the popular media or any press release from the MLA, why not you may well ask. Fear of being wrong and lack of knowledge or expertise of the reality of the problem could be the answer.
Its time the MLA started treating the great Australian public as adults, telling them the facts and the benifits of meat, rather than hiring comedians and film stars to fill us up with more bull shit.
The main benifit for allowing beef imports is strictly theory, as the ban prohibited Australian beef being sold into the lucrative EU market.
Since the ban was lifted, the EU has allowed Australia to export 20,000 tons of prime cuts of beef to a market that is payng more than double the Australian price.
Why are the MLA not reporting these facts, I have no idea. maybe for the same reason they refuse to answer our emails or they just cannot be bothered, maybe they are busy entertaining celebrity's.
An examination of the facts around BSE reveals several points those opposing beef imports should consider.
BSE (bovine spongiform encephalopathy), usually and incorrectly called 'mad cow disease,' emerged in the UK in the early 1990s.
It is a disease exclusive to cattle and there is no scientific evidence pointing to a link between BSE in cattle and the human variant known as CJD - creutzfeldt jakob disease. Having said this the Ministry of Agriculture in England, spent two years, from 1996 to 1998 testing sheeps blood to find a link.
The ministry were blissfully unwaware for two years that it was in fact sheeps blood.This was not revealed by the government, rather a whistle-blower from the ministry to the tabloid press.
The evidence suggests transmission of BSE to humans may be possible through ingestion - that is, by eating contaminated meat.However there has been no evidence to substantiate this.
Studies conducted in the UK and the US place the incubation period of BSE at two-and-a-half to six years - meaning the peak of the disease occurs in cattle four to five years old.
Because of this incubation period, BSE infected cattle have rarely been found at less than 30 months.
Most cattle are slaughtered at 12 - 18 months.
Older cattle are slaughtered for their hamburger meat value - or mince. Sometimes cuts are sold as 'budget' beef. These are cows that have been useed for breeding. When a cow reaches 6 years old its teeth begin to fall out and they can no longer eat grass.
Paul McCartney and his freinds, have not considered what we will do with all these toothless cows unable to eat, assuming we all become vegetarinans. PETA could donate false teeth but they dont like spending their money on animals.
In America, processing practices have been changed considerably to maximise beef safety.
The feeding of meat and bone meal is prohibitedin cattle, despite being proved safe for 150 years and being allowed in pig and poultry food.
Disabled or sick cattle are prohibited from entering the human food supply chain.
Mechanical recovery of meat from bone after slaughter is now greatly restricted - especially for cattle over 30 months.
Specific tissues are now prohibited from human consumption. This includes tonsils, and the small intestine. Also - the skull, brain, eyes and spinal cord from older cattle cannot be used. Yet these items are eaten with great relish in South America and there is no BSE problem
None of the mentioned changes applied before BSE. The writer was killing cows with the symptoms of BSE in the fifties and sixties. We called it the staggers and these animals came in as casualty cattle and went strait into the food chain.
The Australian changes to beef importation rules will continue to ban the import of beef from cattle older than 22 months. These are the same rules which currently apply in New Zealand, South Korea and Japan, probably the most paranoid country on the planet regarding food safety.
Before BSE was found in America in the late 1990s, Australia imported about 30 tonnes of beef per year from the US - all of it top quality meat aimed at the high end of the restaurant trade. Last year we sold America around 300,000 tonnes of mostly hamburger meat from old cattle.
Nobody could possibly suggest the new rules mean Australia will be suddenly flooded with American beef - either steak or mince. It's all very well to have restaurants pay through the nose so they can list 'American Steak' on the menu - but nobody is going to pay a premium to import hamburger meat made from young cattle, its just a non starter.
Those opposed to the new import rules want better labelling and a process to check the safety of beef in relation to BSE. The safety checks are already there - they started in the UK in 1996, later in the US. The rules in Australia are now being changed to bring Australia into line with the rest of the world.
Australia is the worlds second largest exporter of beef, there is no way that imported beef will ever be seen in Australian supermarkets or butchers shops.
abc and newsdesk
Source: newsroom - meattradenewsdaily.co.uk
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