Veterinary Archives, Vol. 75 No. 1, 2005.
Review article
Preventive measure against possible BSE-hazard: Irreversible electrical cattle stunning - a review.
Spyridon Basilios Ramantanis
; Department of Food Technology, Technological Educational Institution (T.E.I.) of Athens, Greece
Mirza Hadžiosmanović
; Department of Hygiene and Technology of Foodstuffs of Animal Origin, Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, University of Zagreb, Croatia
Đurđica Stubičan
; Library, Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, University of Zagreb, Croatia
Abstract
During stunning the entrance of the bolt into the cranial cavity results in massive brain tissue damage. There is a risk of brain tissue particles being transferred via the blood flow in the minor blood circulation system. This can lead to contamination of blood, lungs and heart with the BSE agent. Tissues of CNS carry almost all of the infectivity in cattle sub-clinically and clinically affected by BSE. The approved rapid post-mortem tests cannot identify BSE-infected animals early in the incubation period. Thus it is not inconceivable that an animal with a negative rapid test result could, if stunned by a method that produced emboli, still have BSE-infected emboli dispersed through the venous blood stream, the lungs and the heart. Two systems for electrical stunning of cattle are presented. The replacement of the penetrative stunning method with cardiac arrest stunning, in regions where the BSE is present, will prevent the risk of dissemination of brain particles into the blood and carcass.
Keywords
bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE); variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD); dissemination of brain particles; stunning methods and BSE risks; irreversible electrical stunning
Hrčak ID:
67065
URI
Publication date:
20.2.2005.
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