What Exactly is Mad Cow Disease?

With all of the frightening talk about Mad Cow, officially known as Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy or BSE are you wondering what health risks eating beef really poses to you and your family? So was I. Here's some information to help you see the bigger picture.

Mad cow is a brain disease thought to be caused by abnormally shaped proteins called prions (pronounced pree-ons). When a human is diagnosed with it, it's called variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, or vCJD.

Prions are thought to be the cause because proteins have no genes and it is currently believed impossible for a protein to cause infection. Scientists today only recognize viruses or bacteria as capable of spreading disease and replicating themselves in living cells, so prions are baffling in their ability to infect the brain in the way they do. Prions cause both the animal and human forms of Mad Cow.

All mammals have harmless prions that are there to help whenever some "fine-tuning" is required by the cells of the body. Apparently the ones that are making Swiss cheese of livestock and human brains have been somehow altered in a way that makes them turn against the very cells they had once served.

Abnormal prions are found in the cells of an infected cow's:

• brain
• spinal cord
• eyes
• nervous system
• small intestines
• blood - in low levels

When I first read that about blood I really began to wonder about why we are not testing all cattle that go to market for this disease? I realize the magnitude of testing that would involve, so I do "get" why they aren't (ca-ching!) but even if cattle that are harboring mad cow disease are slaughtered in the most careful way so that the meat for human consumption never comes into contact with the parts mentioned above, their blood is unavoidably in the muscle meat.

Another common use of cattle blood is for calf weaning. Calves are weaned on blood from slaughtered cattle that has be added to the milk replacer they are fed. See The Meatrix 2 - Revolting for the whole story.

Click here to read a recent article on the continued ban on human blood donations from people who may have been exposed to contaminated beef in the UK.

Let's say a piece of meat or some ground meat does somehow end up tainted with residue from any of the body parts above. The abnormal prions that cause vCJD in humans are almost totally resistant to heat, radiation, ultraviolet light, and pretty much anything else that usually has the ability to kill bacteria and viruses. I once thought that washing meat thoroughly before cooking was a safeguard against this disease!

If there are abnormal prions in the blood of the animal, then even though I'm no scientist, I don't see how it can be safe for human or animal consumption. I can only assume that meat from BSE infected cattle looks and cooks up the same as meat from healthy cattle. The people who became infected from eating it would not have eaten it otherwise.

So let's sum this up. As of now (2006) there is no known cure for mad cow disease nor the human version. Even when meat that is tainted with Mad Cow is washed and cooked the risk of ingesting these abnormal prions that ultimately lead to the disease is still there because of blood and resistance to heat. And the testing of cattle is seriously limited here in the U.S.

You're going to have to draw your own conclusions, but it seems obvious to me. Buy organic beef. Easier said than done since the price is sky-high if you can even find it. At our local co-op, an 8 ounce organic strip steak is about $12.00! Yikes!

But if you must eat beef it's reassuring to know that there have been no cases of BSE reported in animals raised their entire lives following organic production standards. So long as the standards remain unchanged.

Study Shows Long Term Danger of Mad Cow Disease

NOVA program "The Brain Eater," This program retraces the scientific sleuthing that linked mad cow disease in cattle to a related brain disease in humans.