For Release January 4, 2004

Going Mad over Mad Cow

AGRI-VIEWS
by Chuck Otte, Geary County Extension Agent

When the news broke right before Christmas about a cow in Washington State having "Mad Cow Disease" I knew it was going to be an interesting holiday season! I don't care for the term Mad Cow disease. It is not very descriptive and creates something akin to cries of "mad dog"! The disease is Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy or BSE.

BSE is a degenerative neurological disease caused by a virtually unknown organism called a prion. It is smaller than known viruses and there is much more that we don't know than we do know about this! It was originally found in Great Britain in 1986 and thousands of cows were stricken with it. This prion resides in the brain and spinal cord of infected animals. If the infected tissue is processed into cattle feed, as was often done in the past, it can infect more animals with BSE. This infection takes a long time to incubate and express itself so virtually all cases are seen in older stock cows or dairy cows.

There is a similar disease in humans called Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease or CJD. Like BSE, there is much that isn't known about CJD. But it is also a degenerative neurological disease and randomly strikes about one in a million Americans every year, affecting both vegetarian and meat eating humans alike. When humans ingest infected cattle brain tissue the BSE organism can cause a disease in humans called variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease or vCJD. During the time that BSE was popping up everywhere in Britain and Europe it was discovered that people were developing vCJD. In total, it appears that less than 200 people developed vCJD in Britain and Europe, in fact it may be less than 150. Compare this to the 250 Americans that develop CJD every year.

So what does all this mean to the American meat consumer? In a nutshell I'd say, "Beef, it's what's for dinner!" The disease is spread through cattle feed. The United States has prohibited the use of beef protein byproducts in cattle feed since 1997. The infected cow appears to have come from Canada which has not had the same restrictions until recently. Thousands of cows have been tested for BSE in the USA over the last ten years. This is not an infectious organism that is going to spread across the USA like a plague.

In response to this single case, the USDA has just instituted addition restrictions on livestock slaughter, making it even less likely that another BSE infected animal would enter the food chain. If you are fond of head cheese or beef brains, it is probably going to become harder to get those specialty food products from now on due to further restrictions. Methods of processing meat animals is continuing to evolve because of this single animal.

What everyone needs to do is to put this whole situation into perspective. The most dangerous thing that most of us do every day is to get in our cars and ride or drive somewhere. Yet we don't even give that a second thought. Compared to most of the rest of the world we have so few concerns about our food and water, that we take it for granted. We put ourselves at the greatest food risk simply in the way we handle food, especially left overs.

So, spend some time studying the stories in the newspaper and on the Internet. Stay abreast of what is happening. Call me if you want more information on BSE or other food health concerns. And then set yourself down and enjoy a good hamburger, steak or roast! I know I will!

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