TSE in cheese

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Wednesday July 19 11:04 AM ET

Warning Issued for Cheese From Three Vermont Flocks

 

By Kevin Kelley

 

ORWELL, Vt (Reuters) - US health officials cautioned consumers on

Tuesday not to eat cheese made from the milk of three flocks of

Vermont sheep that may have a condition similar to ``mad cow''

disease.

 

Officials said that there was no risk that people could be infected

by eating the cheese, but that they were issuing the warning as a

precaution.

 

Sheep from three Vermont farms have been found to have transmissible

spongiform encephalopathy, or TSE, the US Department of Agriculture

said last week.

 

One form of that brain-wasting disease is scrapie, an ailment of

sheep not considered a threat to humans. But another is ``mad cow''

disease, the cause in people of new-variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease.

 

The Agriculture Department said it would take years of further

testing to determine which kind of TSE the sheep had.

 

Appraisers from the department were visiting the flocks in central

Vermont on Tuesday to determine how much the federal government will

pay to seize and incinerate the 376 sheep involved.

 

The government order, which cannot be appealed, came after tests on

four slaughtered animals proved positive for TSE.

 

The Vermont flocks were built with sheep imported from Belgium and

the Netherlands in 1996. The Agriculture Department learned in 1998

that it was likely that the sheep had been exposed to feed

contaminated with mad cow disease while in Europe, and the flocks

were quarantined.

 

But the sheep's milk has been sold, as has cheese made from the milk.

 

The Vermont Health Department said the suspect cheese can be

identified by either the brand name or the plant number on its label.

According to the Vermont Department of Agriculture, these are Three

Shepherds of the Mad River Valley (Plant 50-53) and Northeast Kingdom

Sheep Milk Cheese (Plant 50-45).

 

``The science to date on transmissible spongiform encephalopathy does

not identify milk and dairy products as a risk for transmission to

humans,'' said Dr. Susan Alpert, deputy director of the US Food and

Drug Administration's Centre for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition.

``There's no evidence to date that there's a risk.''

 

But Vermont Health Commissioner Dr. Jan Carney said in a statement

that he had consulted with the US Centers for Disease Control and

Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta, which had recommended that as a

precaution, people not eat cheese made from the milk of sheep with

TSE.

 

The US Agriculture Department expects its appraisers to finish their

work shortly. One farmer, who has not been named, has agreed to

accept whatever indemnity the government decides on, the department

said.

 

But two others say they deserve millions of dollars for the loss of

their livelihood. They told Reuters they feared their flocks could be

taken as early as Friday.