thoughts on mad cow and consumer surveys

[rowanf]

I'm on a Zoompanel food panel for surveys. Usually it is some manufacturer askign if I buy frozen food in some category or other. The usual consumer panel kinds of things. Today it was a survey on BSE. Am I going to continue buying hamburgers in fast food restaurants. I didn't realize that was the question. They asked me how often I eat food containing beef (once or twice a week) and how often I go to a fast food restaurant (about once a month). Then they started asking me about my hamburger buying habits at those restaurants. Well, that once a month trip is to Jack-in-a-Box for a sourdough breakfast sandwich - ham & egg & cheese. It has been *years* since I bought a hamburger in a fast food restaurant. And I'm *surely* not starting now with BSE confirmed in the US cattle population. The hamburgers I make at home are 1/2 lamb & 1/2 beef and all the meat comes from Whole Foods.



There was one fill in the blank on "what do I know about BSE". I filled it out, trying to be concise but getting in all my points. But then had to cut it down to 255 characters. *laugh* My first draft -

"A cow in WA, born in Canada before 1997 has BSE. BSE is caused by prions, an infectious protein, which can be transmitted by eating the nerve tissue of infected animals. It causes varient Cruetzfeld-Jakob disease in humans which is a nervous wasting disease. Feeding practices which include animal byproducts increase the likelihood of transmission between animals. The US hasn't stepped up detection in the way the EU and Japan have done. There is no national tracking of livestock and downer animals are still allowed into the human, farm and pet food stream. Because prions are a protein they are not destroyed by heating or freezing the way normal bacterial agents are treated."

What I trimmed it to -

"A US cow born in Canada before 1997 has BSE. BSE is caused by prions, an infectious protein, transmitted by eating the nerve tissue. It causes variant Creutzfeld-Jakob, a nervous wasting disease. Being a protein prions are not destroyed by heating or freezing like bacterial agents."

I'm kinda glad they didn't tell me it was limited to 255 words before I started. I read popular epidemiology for fun and one of my friends worked with Stan Prusiner on the original prion research that won him the Nobel prize. I have followed "Mad Cow" from its beginning. I have also read the studies of the Kuru variant of Creutzfeld-Jakob in New Guinea cannibals where the women and children got Kuru because of being protein starved by changing economic conditions and eating the brains of their dead (the men got the good bits). Since CJDs takes a really long time to manifest it was fairly endemic in the particular tribes by the time it was discovered. Thus people who had eaten brains as children died of Kuru as adults. A cautionary tale to those who would reverence their dead by eating them. *wry grin* Don't eat the brains or nervous tissue!



Am I worried about getting variant CJD from mad cows? Not particularly. Only 150 people got it in Europe (mostly the UK) out of all of the ground meat that must have been consumed by millions. Not bad odds. Plus, I don't really eat that much ground beef. I do wish that USDA would enact stricter standards. I'm glad that I can easily get hormone-free, free range meats for my family's consumption.

Comments

[ravendiana.livejournal.com]

just keep in mind that BSE is confirmed in 1 US cow. Given that that cow was in Oregon, which regularly trades cttle with Canada, where there have been multiple cases of BSE it's likely that that was a Canadian cow originally. Further more even if it does spread it will be mostly to California, Idaho, Nevada, Utah, and Washington cows. That sitll leaves ALOT of US beef just as safe as it was before. I feel quite confidant about my TX beef.

D (whose friend does own a ranch in south TX)

[rowanf.livejournal.com]

"if it does spread it will be mostly to California, Idaho, Nevada, Utah, and Washington cows."

And this is supposed to comfort this California woman? *laugh*

[ravendiana.livejournal.com]

I get confused, for some reason I thought you were in New England....

Still until it's more than One cow I wouldn't really worry

[muninnhuginn]

Catching up on my "friends plus feeds" list I got two contiguous headlines from Nature: First mad cow found in America and Prion proteins may store memories. So when my memory starts improving, I know that trip into MacDonald's for a hamburger in Stratford-Upon-A in 1982 was a bad idea?

[rowanf.livejournal.com]

Hmm. Interesting. But there *is* a reason these diseases are called "spongiform encephalopathies". I don't want great holes in my brain. It works poorly enough as it is. ;-)