Mad cow disease in Calif.

[KristyHall]

BSE-prions are not destroyed at normal cooking temperatures.

It's spread among livestock by using infected animal products (typically meat-and-bone meal) in livestock feed. After the first BSE encounters in the 1990s, the US banned the feeding of ruminants (cattle, sheep and goats) food that contained mammalian meat products. However, mammalian meat products could still be fed to non-ruminant animals (such as pigs, poultry, dogs and cats), and poultry meat products could still be fed to ruminants. So the cycle was not completely closed, and this has been discussed for years as a possible route for BSE to gain access to cattle.

Say, for example, infected cattle tissue was detected. It couldn't be sold as food for humans, so into the animal food system it goes. It couldn't go into cattle, sheep or goat feed, but it could go into poultry, pig or pet feed. If the prions infected poultry, we wouldn't know, since it isn't tested for BSE. If infected poultry material was then used to make cattle feed (poultry products are completely legal to be used in cattle feed, and have been used in feedlot feed for a long time), then reinfection of cattle could be possible. Because the prions require very high temperatures (typically higher than those reached in many rendering plants) to be destroyed, the cycle of reinfection remains open, albeit indirectly.

Europe banned the feeding of cattle any animal products in order to prevent future BSE. The US decided to be less restrictive, likely a result of pressure from the feed and beef industries, thus continuing to allow cows, sheep and goats to be fed meat-and-bone meal and other animal products, so long as they don't come from other cows, sheep or goats. But chickens can eat the cows, and then cows can eat the chickens.

Does anyone know if you can become infected by eating chickens? Can they become infected with mamalian prions?

 

[micheller1210]

glad I get my meat from my local butcher.....I say just follow the money trail.

 

[KristyHall]

My understanding (loose) is that it is the brain and spinal tissue that harbors the disease and if you eat them humans may get it but eating the meat is supposedly safe.

I had 2 hogs butchered about a month ago and the guy removed the spinal cord and said it must be sent to a landfill not to the rendering plant by law, same with the brain but he atually sells the heads to the hispanics... brains and all.

About fire years ago, I was learning how to make stock in a professional kitchen, and the instructor was using cow vertebrae. I told him that the spinal column can harbor prions that attck the brain and cause Spongiform Encephalopathy (mad cow). He insisted that mad cow was caused from cows standing in their own feces.

I was shocked, and since then i won't buy stock or bullion, but make my own.

Personally, i won't even cook a deer neck any more without first removing the meat form the spinal colum. Wasting disease occasionally found in deer, is caused by mutated prions as well and can be passed onto humans.

 

[KristyHall]

Blowback from the bolt gun can contaminate muscle and other meat cuts. https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&...me1261&sig=AHIEtbR4ysXAuXgy55cOIeDN7AjGkz_zUg

That has me wondering. When cooking the spinal fluid leaks into the surrounding meat. perhaps it is best to remove the spine from any animal before cooking it. Has anyone heard of cases of spinal fluid contamination through cooking?

 

[cassie]

I have not heard of getting mad cow from chickens. Actually, there is some question whether you can get mad cow from cows. In Britain, where the human mad cow diagnoses were originally made, at least one of the individuals that was supposedly infected with mad cow actually had a brain disorder caused by chronic alcoholism, and at least two more were lifelong vegetarians who did not eat meat of any kind. If it makes you feel any better, the mad cow in California was an anomoly. She did not catch the disorder from another animal. Something spontaneously went kaflooey in her brain. Happens sometimes.

 

[KristyHall]

For those who want stats on human cases/deaths from prion disease, here you go: http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/dvrd/bse/

Thanks for all the information

 

[KristyHall]

I have not heard of getting mad cow from chickens. Actually, there is some question whether you can get mad cow from cows. In Britain, where the human mad cow diagnoses were originally made, at least one of the individuals that was supposedly infected with mad cow actually had a brain disorder caused by chronic alcoholism, and at least two more were lifelong vegetarians who did not eat meat of any kind. If it makes you feel any better, the mad cow in California was an anomoly. She did not catch the disorder from another animal. Something spontaneously went kaflooey in her brain. Happens sometimes.

Thanks. I was wondering if the prion transmission was purely by mammal to mammal, or if it could jump to avian and back. I have read of cases where one rare cases hunters in the US had developed the " wasting disease" from eating the brains of infected game mammals.

 

[cassie]

I think eating brains would be risky. I wouldn't worry about eating muscle tissue, but that is me.

 

[ChicknThief]

I don't know about the rest of you, but I for one am having me some steak tonight, mad cow or no. Extra rare

Chances of actually getting your hands on contaminated meat are infinitesimally small. Especially since it was a dairy cow

Besides, even if I do catch the angry bovine, at least I will go out after eating a **** fine meal!

 

[hemet dennis]

I found a cow that was fed only GMO grains and grazed on fields watered with recycled water with nuclear fallout from Japan. Now I'm having a steak from it. Maybe I'll grow another head and be twice as smart.