Mad Cow Disease: Is It What’s For Dinner?

I normally don’t eat beef. For the most part, I eat about 70% vegetarian, 29% seafood & poultry, 0.9% beef, and 0.1% pork. Back in the early to mid 90’s I developed an intense dislike of meat, particularly beef and went vegetarian for a few years. I then spent a long time slowly bringing meat back into my diet. Beef was the last to come back into the diet.

Now, this doesn’t mean that I don’t occassionally love a good steak, hamburger (not that fast food crap), or beef stirfry, but overall, it just doesn’t appeal to me. In fact, for about six months I’ve off and on considered giving it up totally again.

Yesterday I read an article about Mad Cow Disease and the human equivalent vCJD (variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease). [”Beef Without Borders” (Paranoia Magazine, Fall, 2005)] It’s some scary stuff. It’s certainly making me rethink the whole eating hamburger thing.

Variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD) is a rare and fatal human neurodegenerative condition. As with Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, vCJD is classified as a Transmissible Spongiform Encephalopathy (TSE) because of characteristic spongy degeneration of the brain and its ability to be transmitted. vCJD is a new disease that was first described in March 1996. [“Variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease” (World Health Organization)]

For example, did you know that you can have contracted the disease years before the symptoms show? The first documented case was Peter Hall, who was a 20-year old vegetarian. They believe he contracted it as a child from eating beef burgers. (It’s like my acquaintance who gave up smoking and then six months later was diagnosed with lung cancer.) So…as you read this, if you have ever eaten beef, you could already have the disease.

Early in the illness, patients usually experience psychiatric symptoms, which most commonly take the form of depression or, less often, a schizophrenia-like psychosis. Unusual sensory symptoms, such as “stickiness” of the skin, have been experienced by half of the cases early in the illness. Neurological signs, including unsteadiness, difficulty walking and involuntary movements, develop as the illness progresses and, by the time of death, patients become completely immobile and mute. [“Variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease” (World Health Organization)]

Of course, up until December 23, 2003, the U.S. was considered to be free of BSE (also known as Mad Cow Disease). The cow was under 7 years old and had been shipped from Canada to the U.S. two years earlier with 80 other cows.

BSE, also known as Mad Cow Disease, is a brain-wasting disease, a disorder of the central nervous system. Symptoms in cattle may inclue abnormal posture, lack of coordination, inability or difficulty in rising or walking, weight loss, and decreased milk production. BSE is always fatal, normally within two weeks to six months after the initial symptoms appear. the animal may have been infected two to eight years prior to showing symptoms. [”Beef Without Borders(Paranoia Magazine, Fall, 2005)”]

It is believed that the change from a grain-based diet to a diet which included meat and bone meal in the late 70’s and early 80’s contributed to the the issue. It’s believed that sheep affected with Scrapie, a BSE-type disease, were part of the mix of animals sent to the rendering plants that produced the feed for cattle, swine, and chickens as well as pet food. In July, 1988, the U.K. ordered a ban on the feeding of ruminant materials to ruminant animals, but the U.S. did not do so until 1997 — and yet the rendered material (including sheep, cattle, horses, swine, and even road kill and euthanized dogs and cats) are still being fed to swind, chickens, and pets.

Note: ewwwwwww… This makes me want to switch my cats to a vegetarian diet like my crazy co-worker and her dog…

Anyway, back to the 2003 discovery of the infected cow…

Initially the story said this cow had been flagged for testing because it was a “downer” animal. Downers are animals unable to walk or stand when brought to the slaughterhouse. These animals are also flagged for human consumption in the form of hamburger, pizza meat, or luncheon meat. It’s estimated that 195,000 downer cattle are slaughter each year and at that time 90% went to the processing plants untested.

So, in light of those facts, the U.S. banned sick and injured cattle (”downers”) from slaughter and use in the human food chain.

However, a few months later, it was discovered that this cow had not been a “downer” at all; worse, it hadn’t displayed any signs of having the illness. Lucky they tested it at random, huh?

But the situation gets a little murky because by the time the test results were back, the meat had already been processed and shipped to sellers in six Western states. It had been mixed in with other meat by then to create 38,000 lbs of ground beef. 17,000 lbs were never accounted for.

Speaking of which, only 28 of those 80 cows the infected cow was shipped with could be found at that time; meaning, there are 52 more out there that could be infected and could be infecting anyone eating a burger, a taco salad, a cheeseburger pizza, Hamburger Helper, etc. However, U.S. officials assured the public that even if those 52 were infected, the risk to humans is low.

Here are some facts for you:

• In a 9-year time frame only 30K slaughtered cattle out of 300 million have been tested.
• Despite promises by the USDA to test 220K cattle by the end of 2004, as of mid-July 2004, only 15K had been tested out of the 35 million that are slaughtered each year.
• In Jan, 2001 (4 years after the US ban), Sandra Blakeslee of The New York Times reported that of the 180 large rendering companies nearly a quarter did not have “a system to prevent commingling” and a quarter of the 347 FDA-licensed feed mills that handle ruminate materials also did not have such a system. 1,593 smaller feed mills do not require FDA licenses and again a quarter of those had no such system.
• Admittedly only two cases of vCJD have officially been diagnosed in North America but Steve Mitchell, a reporter for United Press International, “cites studies showing that ‘3 to 13 percent of those diagnosed with Alzheimer’s actually had CJD and that the mad cow pathogen can cause both sporadic and vCJD’.” It’s possible that tens of thousands in the U.S. may have CJD due to eating infected meat and not know it.
• In Feb., 2004, Italian scientists discovered a second form of mad cow disease that more closely resembles sporadic CJD.

Obviously, not enough is being done to protect us. One in one million people come down with a form of CJD but that’s still a lot of people. Certainly it’s enough to wonder what sort of gamble you’re taking the next time you order a big juicy hamburger or the next time you have a cook-out with your kids.

For me, I think I’m going to have a nice garden salad for lunch…

Related articles at the CDC:
Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy, or Mad Cow Disease
Classic Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease
variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease

And elsewhere:
Thousands may be harbouring vCJD (BBC News)
US ‘rediscovers’ its second mad cow (newscientist.com)
VCJD: Further precautionary measures announced
Research confirms that vCJD prions can be removed from blood

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5 comments

1. on August 22, 2005 at 1:20 pm

   Jeff (no, the other one) said:

   I read Mad Cow USA last year; download the entire book free here:

   www.prwatch.org/books/mcusa.pdf

   I’m very careful about my beef intake now, but the damage may already have been done.

   Haven’t seen an update lately on the Creekstone Farms folks (good burgers, by the way, widely available in your grocer’s freezer): http://wampum.wabanaki.net/archives/000922.html
   http://www.creekstonefarmspremiumbeef.com/bse_release.html

2. on August 22, 2005 at 2:32 pm

   n. mallory said:

   I’m seriously considering switch completely over to vegetarian “ground meat” substitute. I’ve heard it’s improved a lot since my last stint as a vegetarian. I don’t think I’ll go completely vegetarian this time though.

   I’ve already gone from regular dairy to soy products, except yogurt. Soy “yogurt” doesn’t have the right consistency.

   I’ll have to check out that book and links when I get home…thought I might already be too paranoid about the subject.

3. on August 22, 2005 at 4:29 pm

   Jeff (no, the other one) said:

   It’s enough to make you want to grow all your own food, as if you had the time…!

4. on November 9, 2005 at 5:57 am

   Net Risou said:

   In Japan, beef from America will be lifted the ban on import soon. Japanese（except a part as people of the food service industry, etc）think that American test and management of beef is unbelievable careless(I looked American test and management of beef on TV). The condition of lifting of the ban on import of beef from America is a twenty-month old cattle and the under, and to get rid of the perilous region of cattle(Because current quick diagnostic way of BSE test is difficult to detect the abnormal prion from thrty-month old cattle and the under.). But, according to Eastern medicine, the perilous region is the place that hereditary elements appear strongly. Therefore, can’t see the abnormal prion by technology but may hide the ingredient of the abnormal prion of the root of BSE. And as the number of data by technology is insufficient, can’t assert that a twenty-month old cattle and the under are safe perfectly, it is the opinion of Japanese scientists. In Japan, as the law obliges to show the producing districts of foodstuffs but doesn’t obliges to show the producing districts of foods, we Japanese will have beef from America eaten certainly without knowing a part of foodstuff of our eating foods is the beef from America. We Japanese fears very much. Science and technology isn’t necessarily perfect. We Japanese recommend you American Japanese test for all cattle.

5. on March 14, 2006 at 1:33 pm

   The Naked Truth » Blog Archive » Recommended Reading — All Female Writers Edition said:

   […] With the recent discovery of a Mad Cow in Alabama, I thought I’d toot my own horn with a post from the way back when machine on Mad Cow Disease. […]

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