Beyond Pesticides/National Coalition Against the Misuse of Pesticides

Page 16 Pesticides and You Vol. 23, No. 2, 2003 Editor’s Note: On May 20, 2003, Canadian agriculture officials reported that a cow slaughtered in Alberta in January tested positive for Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE), commonly known as mad cow disease. It is the country’s first case since 1993. Fearing the disease could spread to the U.S., the U.S. Department of Agriculture has a temporary ban on Canadian beef. Mad cow disease was first reported in the United Kingdom in 1986, peaking in 1993 with almost 1,000 new cases per week. In 1996, variant CreutzfeldtJakob Disease (vCJD) was detected in humans and has been linked to eating contaminated beef. Both are fatal brain diseases with unusually long incubation periods, often lasting years. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, a total of 125 human cases have been reported in the world: 117 from the United Kingdom, six from France, and one each from Ireland and Italy. No human cases have been reported in association with the recent Canadian case. While officials have tied BSE to an infectious microorganism, a British organic farmer, Mark Purdey, has linked the disease to organophosphate pesticide exposure. Years ago, Mr. Purdey resisted his government’s order to spray his cattle with organophosphates for warble fly and went to court for a judicial review. He won his case, was exempted from using the spray, and has gone on to conduct research on the disease. No cows born in his herd developed BSE. He has contributed numerous articles on the subject of BSE to scientific journals. He farms in Somerset, UK. The following article appeared in Wise Traditions in Food, Farming and the Healing Arts, the quarterly magazine of the Weston A. Price Foundation, Spring 2000, which can be found on their website www.westonaprice.org.