http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3797510/



How concerned should Americans be? What could the repercussions of this finding be?

It's difficult for me to be very objective about this, for a couple of reasons, so let me admit my prejudice up front. As most of you know, I gave up eating meat several years ago, so I tend to believe any warning about the dangers of meat consumption. Also, a few years back, I was assigned to write a brief article about prion diseases for a reference book. During the research I did for this article, I became convinced that the threat of Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE, better known as "mad cow disease") being transmitted to humans through eating beef was very real. Therefore, this news article scares me. I'm sure that all possible precautions will be taken to ensure the safety of the American beef supply, but I still think that it is very possible that people will die as a direct cause of eating it.

It should be noted here that prion diseases are unlike any other type of infectious disease. Prions are not alive, not even in the sense that viri are alive, but are simply abnormally shaped protein molecules. Unfortunately, these abnormal protein molecules tend to cause other protein molecules to change shape as well, so in a sense they reproduce. Prion diseases are always fatal, and the mechanism by which they spread and cause symptoms are so unusual that any possible type of treatment remains highly speculative.

I suggest that Americans should be somewhat concerned. The effect of this finding is hard to say. A slight decrease in the consumption of beef? New laws passed to attempt to control this problem?

We definitely need to hear the opinion of our British friends on this forum.

It doesn't change anything for me. I've been keeping an eye on this for years, and figured it was only a matter of time before BSE was found here. BSE is only one example of a whole family called transmissible spongiform encephalopathies, which includes scrapie in sheep, wasting disease in deer and elk, and something else that I can't remember in rabbits and squirrels. Many of these diseases are considered endemic within their respective species, and have a proven ability to jump from one species to another. IIRC, it's generally believed that it got from sheep to cows in the UK via pigs. Anywhere that animal protein is fed to other animals, the relevant form of TSE is practically certain to appear. We in the US looked down our noses at the UK and Canada when they had their crises. Now the Aussies and Kiwis are having their moment. Next it will be Argentina laughing at them.

If you haven't already read Deadly Feasts, you should consider doing so. It's a very scary book. There's nothing we can do to protect ourselves individually, but with any luck this latest finding should have a couple of good effects. One would be to curb the practice of "cow cannibalism". Another might be to accelerate research into prion diseases, perhaps eventually leading to a cure or at least an adequate palliative.

Yeah, you know when I heard that cows are processed and fed to other cows that really disturbed me. No wonder the chances for things of this nature occurring are going up. It just doesn't seem natural or healthy to feed a herbivore it's own kinds flesh...

We should be very concerned about beef since the average American eats about 60 lbs. Of beef a year.

You would think that since there is a strict law against feeding cattle animal parts (especially sheep and animals known to carry BSE) that we would not have the problem but apparenty the government does little to monitor what farmers feed their cattle. Instead they look for sick cattle entering the food market at slaughter houses.


I don’t feel that comfortable with this approach since what I have heard is they always check animals that show clear signs of the disease and do some random checking of others. But how would we catch animals that did not show symptoms?

Interesting points...

The cost of a Rib-Eye at the grocery store dropped from $13.99/lb. to $9.99/lb. even before I heard the news on the Television.

A local news broadcast, reported that a McDonald's restaurant news release stated, "There is no danger to the public, because we don't use any meat from the infected species in our restaurants."

Now that makes me feel safe

I am more of a pasta guy myself, but in the end it is just one cow, and there a millions of cows in the U.S. I would not worry too much about it. Anyway the meat I normally get is shot by hunters and dropped off at my local butcher, I never liked the taste of all the hormones in my meat.

Not very. As long as it was quickly quarantined and they can find no other infected cows (yet), then there is probably no reason to fear that this has spread farther then where it is now.



Economic damages will be minimal because of the quick quarantine of the infected cow and it's herd but there will be too many paranoid/freaked out nations that will ban US beef for a long time because they are just that...paranoid and freaked out.

I have a feeling, though, that no matter how hard the US Ag Department says there is no more threat, there will still be reprocussions

There is a lot of misunderstanding circulating on the disease so pronouncements like this are extremely dangerous. Sure, the cow may be quarantined, but the risk exists not in the forward movements of the prion (from the infected cows to others) but in the regressive movements (from earlier infected cows to the one in question.) Cows can survive for months with the prion material in their nervous tissue (brain and spinal cord tissues are held as the high risk material, as well as some of the small intestine) without exhibiting symptoms. When you consider that cows are often slaughtered within their first two years detection becomes more of a concern. The prion can be passed (it is theorized) in two ways in a domesticated population; transmission from mother to offspring, and transmission through a contaminated food chain. Once transmission has occured the only way to determine how the disease was spread is by tracking the infected cow and examining all other ruminants (as there is some concern that cross-species prion contamination can occur) that said cow came into contact with. If is possible that BSE (Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy) can occur spontaneously (although evidence of this is extremely hard to come by so it remains a sort of fringe theory) but in all likelihood that prion came from somewhere, and it is now up to APHIS to determine where. It is too early to say that there is no reason to fear, but it is too early to say that food-supply contamination has occured as well.

Fast food restaurants are the worst risk, because they get the lowest quality beef. And as for this particular cow that tested positive in Washington, I have heard (although it may be rumour) that the cow was not even able to walk to the slaughterhouse, and the test for disease was for safety.

Personally, though, I live all the way across the country, and am not too scared about the situation. Unfortunately, I suspect it will indeed cost the U.S. tremendous amounts of money.

Yes I think you are right on Ultimatejoe. Since we have been only looking at animals that are “downers” there is the possibility that many younger infected animals that did not display symptoms have made it into the food supply.


This is from 2002: http://www.gardenburger.com/theUniverse/foodSafety.htm

In response to the BSE threat, the FDA banned the use of proteins from dead cattle, sheep, goats, deer, elk, and antelope in cattle feed starting in 1997. Nevertheless, the GAO concluded that, "While BSE has not been found in the United States, federal actions do not sufficiently ensure that all BSE-infected animals or products are kept out or that if BSE were found, it would be detected promptly and not spread to other cattle through animal feed or enter the human food supply."


The GAO wrote of weaknesses in USDA and FDA import controls and insufficient testing for the disease by the USDA. It's harshest criticism was reserved for the feed ban, which it found to be poorly enforced and more permissive than those imposed by other countries (it allows the use of proteins from dead pigs and horses). In one passage, the GAO stated, "FDA has not acted promptly to compel firms to keep prohibited proteins out of cattle feed and to label animal feed that cannot be fed to cattle. We identified some noncompliant firms that had not been reinspected for 2 or more years and instances when no enforcement action had occurred even though the firms had been found noncompliant on multiple inspections. Moreover, FDA's data on inspections are severely flawed and, as a result, FDA does not know the full extent of industry compliance. FDA acknowledges that it has not yet identified and inspected all firms subject to the ban."

I think one thing that has been lost in the controversy is the fact that it appears humans can only contact the disease through eating the brains or spinal cord of the infected animal. I think publicization of this would lower any economic harm. However nearly all nations endeavor to protect their farmers from competition, this is an excuse to do just that.

You make a good point, but it should be kept in mind that products like ground beef, sausages, and the like usually contain central nervous system tissue. Eating 100% muscle tissue (or, I suppose, organ meats like liver) does not seem to be a threat. (Will this lower sales of the cheaper meats like hamburgers and hot dogs, and increase the sale of steaks? Will people switch to fish and poultry? It will be interesting to see.)

As I said earlier it is believed that certain parts of the lower intestine can also transmit the disease; and the entrails are used in a great deal of food products.

Would you consider the United States, then, to be one of these "paranoid and freaked out" nations? In July 1989, we banned live ruminants from Britain and restricted importing certain cattle products; in December 1991, we restricted importing ruminant meat and edible products from Britain and banned most by-products of their ruminants, we banned most by-products of ruminants from any country with BSE, and we restricted importing ruminant meat and edible products from the EU; in December 1997, we banned importing live ruminants and most ruminant products from the whole of Europe.

I suppose, GoAmerica, it's a public health issue when we do it, but paranoid freakiness when anyone else does. Go, America!

As with everything else, the economic damage will depend a lot on the PR. Something tells me, though, that when it comes to a fatal illness like Creutzfeldt-Jakob, it's going to take a bit more than Anne Veneman saying she's serving beef for Christmas to get Japan, South Korea, Mexico, Australia, Russia, Brazil, Chile, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Peru, Singapore, Taiwan, Ukraine, Thailand, China, South Africa, Colombia, and Canada to lift their bans over night - especially since all those countries (including our top three beef importers) are so "paranoid and freaked out" already.

Yes and apparently processed meets like baloney are very high in tissue from the central nervous system and should be of concern.

With the BSE outbreak in Great Britain, well over a million head of cattle were confirmed to have BSE. 150 humans were diagnosed with prion disease which could be attributed to the consumption of infected beef products.

There is a risk but you can also see the risk is very low even if one were to eat infected beef. The expose to humans had to be in tens of millions.

The infected cow in Washington was a Holstein, a dairy cow. She was diagnosed post mortem.

All cases of BASE are believed to have been caused by consumption of infected tissue. The United States has an excellent record in prohibiting the use of tissue in cattle feed. Producers have a huge incentive to comply. I doubt this case will be anything more than a local exception.

The means to identify prion diseases is to look at a very specific section of the brain stem under a microscope. Prion infection can not only take months to manifest themselves but it can take many years. There is no blood test.

The risk to myself from death due to eating beef is extremely remote. I have a better chance of winning a multistage lottery.

There is definitely more to learn about prions. Tracing the history of this one Holstein is a good idea. Proper precautions and education of producers should be an adequate means to limit risks and this has been done, but this is a good time to do it again.

As a dairy cow, relegated to slaughter, for what means unknown, possibly because of the disease and the rest of the herd has not so far been tracked, from what I know today. Dairy cows only go to slaughter once they are dry, or unviable.

Only about 20,000 downer cows are (supposedly) tested, when the US has 200,000 downer cows each year, from recent articles. Europe now tests ALL downer cows.
UPI has repeatedly since July 2003 asked for testing results from 2002 and 2003, which has been outright neglected by the USDA. UPI threatened legal action under the Freedom of Information act which says they must release information within 30 days. As of Dec 17th, UPI has still been delayed. Steve Mitchell of UPI has been following and writing articles on mad cow for quite some time. (easy Google search)

There has been huge controversy about downer cow testing in the US, not using fast and proven European methods, nor with vigilance, nor informing the public. This is a concern, there is no doubt.
Its not paranoia. This is a reality which occured in England, a lesser beef consuming nation and everyone knew it was a real problem. Canada saw its first case in may 2003 and took precautions and were honest. CJD, BSE is here too, no matter what they say about the 'safety of the food source'. There have been many incidences of CWD (Chronic wasting disease) in deer documented in the US much before this incidence. We have a prion disease problem of which information is not being made public.

What would anyone expect the spin to be considering the economic reprocussions?
"Well, Im serving Beef up on my table! and so should every warm blooded patriotic American!' ( At 60lbs per year) Well goody two shoes for you, until your mush brain cant talk about it any longer. Its not just the economy for each and everyone of us. Take your own precautions or take your chances, but dont believe its not in the food source, it is.

It is a relatively low threat considering all the things out there that can get you, however, who really relishes the idea of their brain turning to mush for eating something that was really bad for you anyway and you could easily do without?

The number one reason for cows to become downers is lameness. Disease can cause it also. There are inspectors at slaughter plants to identify sick animals, downer or not. Any animals on visual exam which appear ill are checked, usually via thermometer.

---------

These statements are vague. They are exaggerations. They are unsubstantiated.

The information on prions is being made public. There was an excellent article on Chronic Wasting Disease in Scientific America about five months ago. Research was essentially nil on this group of diseases until the outbreak of BSE in Britain. I wanted to know more about it then so called the CDC. They had a list of all three people who were doing research on it. I gave a phone call to one of them in California. He did not know many details. (Research was at a stand still because of the length of time it was taking. It was taking 20 years after a test group was infected to be able to study the effects of the disease. The slow progression of the disease was making research impractical.)

There is no conspiracy. There is no cover up. There is no mass numbers of Americans dying from eating beef.

It the risk zero? No. If any risk at all is reason enough for people to be afraid then indeed stop eating beef. I contend that most reasonable people knowing the facts will find the risk to be inconsequental. It is important for people to know what is known about prion diseases so they can make informed choices on their own. Misinformation and misstated facts will be in the media. These will need to be corrected. Prion disease is poorly understood and it is a challenging disease to comprehend.

Come on Artemise, do you really believe those who choose to eat beef are turning their brain into mush? What is the 'secret information' you have uncovered which leads you to this conclusion?

You are misinterpreting me and taking my commentary out of context.

I said, 'It is a relatively low threat considering all the things out there that can get you, however, who really relishes the idea of their brain turning to mush for eating something that was really bad for you anyway and you could easily do without?'

CJD causes rapid dementia (holes in the brain), and is fatal. Why did we react so strongly against Britain in its time and so many nations react against us now? Its not really percentage of deaths but the form which it takes that freaks people out. Also prions cannot be destroyed by heat and sterilization, so reusable surgical and dental equipment may spread the disease, as well there seems to be some evidence of transmission through blood. It is incorrect that prions cannot be found in muscle meat or milk either. Britain bans the use of milk from infected cows. In the US we eat more beef and more possible infected parts than most nations.

I have been watching independant news on prion diseases for some time and have yet to see it adressed in any thorough way in US mass media until a week ago, Scientific American doesnt quite figure as mass media, although a good source.

Your following commentary tells me there is very little interest in this 'problem' in the US , it doesnt tell me there is no problem.

I have no 'secret information' other than what has been stated already in this thread, but when I say we have a prion disease problem, I believe we do, and its getting little attention, especially concerning CWD in wildlife and the possible consequences to the environment. The US and Canada have been destroying hundreds of thousands of deer and elk because of CWD.

I believe Mad Cow is in the US food source also, it doesnt take a conspiracy to think so, it just takes Canada showing up with it 6 mos ago, lax regulations and testing in the US, a first case...etc.

I thought Id add these two articles as informative.
CJD in the US

Us Violates WHO guidelines for BSE

The media hypes everything up to the point of instilling fear
in the population. IF you're scared you tune in more, and
thus, they receive more money from the advertisors.

I think it is safe to say that your chances of getting Mad Cow
disease are about the same as the chances of being struck
by lightening.

You could reduce the chances even more by doing what I
do - live a vegetarian lifestyle.

The issue is not getting mad cow only from the meat itself. Once prions are in the food supply, then in humans, they could spread to the blood supply and through surgical instruments.
Although as far as is known Europe did an amazing job containing their BSE problem, by exterminating millions of cows, it has recently been found that 1 in every ten, or nine of the ninety six who died, donated blood, another 12 donors who have CJD have not died yet. This could mean that many people are carrying the vCJD without knowing it, and they also may donate blood, go to the dentist, have surgery etc.
http://www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/content/2003/s1013776.htm

There IS a REASON why nations treat mad cow as a very big threat and ban beef sales from any country BSE suspected or confirmed. This is not media hype or paranoia. There is not enough known about how prions are passed yet, but there is enough known that ALL downer cows are tested in Europe, no cow blood or parts are used for animal feed (unlike in the US which allows the use of cow blood as feed to calves and other animals), and that prions are always, after an unknown incubation period followed by a rapid dementia, deterioration and death.

' Dr. Richard Lacey, a leading microbiologist whose early warnings were ignored by the British government, cautions that BSE "is much more serious than AIDS." On Dec. 17, 1999 Lord Phillips, the BSE Inquiry chairman, stated that the known cases of nvCJD may turn out to be just the "tip of the iceberg." On Jan. 7, 2000 the European Union's Scientific Steering Committee warned that millions of European consumers were at risk of developing CJD. And in July, 1999 neurogeneticist John Collinge, a member of the British government's Spongiform Encephalopathy Advisory Committee who has warned of "a disaster of Biblical proportions," stated in The Lancet, "Studies... suggest that the early variant CJD cases may have been exposed during the preclinical phase of the BSE epidemic. It must therefore be considered that many cases may follow from later exposure in an epidemic that would be expected to evolve over decades."
http://www.disinfo.com/archive/pages/article/id906/pg2/

This is all speculation, thats not to say not worth consideration...prions are as deadly as AIDS with no known cure.

This just in:
By Randy Fabi
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Agriculture Department said on Saturday the Washington state dairy cow infected with mad cow disease had probably been imported from Canada but Canadian authorities called the statement premature.
Ron DeHaven, the USDA's chief veterinarian, told reporters the animal was likely imported into Idaho from Alberta, Canada, in August 2001.
"The positive animal likely entered the United States as part of a group of 74 dairy cattle that were imported through the border crossing at Eastport (in Idaho)," DeHaven said.

It seems clear to me that the US Beef industry has far too much power over the FDA regulations process. The section below from the article http://www.rense.com/general46/usfup.html illustrates the point. Regardless of where the cow came from I think that the FDA is very soft on this industry and the American consumer is going to pay the price.




In May 2003, the Food and Drug Administration finally drafted up proposed voluntary "suggestions" for the rendering industry, recommending that deer and elk infected with chronic wasting disease, or at high risk for the disease, be excluded from animal feed.[21] However, even if this proposal is enacted, it represents only non- binding, non-enforceable "guidance" recommendations for the industry. The FDA made these same kinds of "guidance" recommendations to pharmaceutical companies over a decade ago, discouraging the use of bovine-derived materials from countries with mad cow disease in manufacturing their vaccines,[22] only to learn 7 years later that major pharmaceutical manufacturers simply ignored the guidelines.[

The media is blowing this Mad Cow thing WAY out of proportion...like they do everything else

They make it sound like we are having the same problems the UK and the rest of Europe had during the 90's

The regular media is not. However many people have been following the mad cow situation for some time and writing on it. Europe has of course been dealing with it for over a decade and we should look to them for guidlines and advice.

Go America, are you reading the information provided or just making general write-off statements, because? Do you not believe anything about it or that we simply cannot have this problem which so many others have already experienced?
On what premise?

'What countries have reported cases of BSE or are considered to have a substantial risk associated with BSE? (May 2003)

These countries are: Albania, Austria, Belgium, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Former Yugoslavia Republic of Macedonia, The Netherlands, Norway, Oman, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovak Republic, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Japan, and United Kingdom (Great Britain including Northern Ireland and the Falkland Islands). '
http://vm.cfsan.fda.gov/~comm/bsefaq.html

What exactly makes us exempt, now that Canada has it and our cattle trade a soft border?

Over a hundred people have already died in Great Britain because sentiments exactly like these. A disease that cannot be easily tracked, with unknown transmission vectors and no treatment on the horizon is VERY serious.

Aside from the fact that you yourself aren't sick (at least as far as you know) why do you think a deadly disease that may have contaminated the food supply isn't newsworthy?

BSE is a more serious threat than Saddam Hussein ever was. How is it that some of the very same people who scream and yell at everyone to "wake up" to one threat seem sound asleep as regards the other?

Oh yeah. BSE isn't photogenic. The fight against disease is less riveting on TV than dropping bombs on a nation's capital, and victories don't provide photo ops on aircraft carriers. It's not as politically useful, therefore it's dismissed as unimportant.

It makes my skin crawl just to think about it...


When I heard the news about BSE in America I was confused because I thought it had already surfaced in the states... apparently my memory was playing tricks on me though.

I don't know how great the risks are but reading about it certainly makes me nervous (and Vicky's post did'nt reassure me either). I think that for as long as all other considerations give way to commerce though, then this is the sort of price we are going to continue to pay. It only surprises me that we don't have more of this type of thing happening given the reputation farmers have managed to build up for themselves in the past few decades.

More people die from pathogenic bacteria in this country every year than have fallen prey to (the human form of mad cow disease) in the United Kingdom. That is according to Christine Bruhn, director of the Center for Consumer Research at the University of California at Davis.

Parts of the that should be avoided are the tongue, and spinal cord, T-bone steaks because it comes from the area where the vertebrae in the backbone meet the rib and have the grocer grind your beef from a good cut of meat.

This is serious, but we need to place it in perspective. I think I read recently that 36,000 people a year die from the flu here in the states.

Bela,
True, but...
This is a 'so far'scenario. Its only been a little more than a decade since humans showed up effected by this, as far as we know (?) BSE prions have an unknown icubation period, in cows can be 5 years, which means many cows can be infected and slaughtered before showing symptoms. In humans it was already a decade after suspected infection until they showed up as CJ, rapid fatal disease. It is not known how many people are carrying prions, how many could be infected before showing symptoms, much like AIDS.

I dont mean to be alarmist, its just worth watching and staying informed.

I find it interesting that the FDA said that the food supply is safe, although they dont know exactly where the meat is. They did not inform about T-Bone steaks which, as you say, are cut from the spine, also rib-eyes and especially hamburgers are risky as a first measure about this beef.

To add:

In my posted article on the WHO guidlines it explains how meat left on the bone of a cleaned carcass is crushed to bleed out a 'beef paste' which is usually used for cheap hamburgers, hot dogs and processed meats. These are the 'beef trimmings' mentioned in this above. These can have the highest amount of spinal cord or other infected tissue, since often all of the spinal cord is not completely removed or splattered during the splitting process of the carcass.

The tongue and tonsils have been known to contain large amounts of prions in both infected cows and humans. Since children tend to eat more hot dogs and hamburgers in america, its worth watching and thinking about.

The flu does not have a long incubation process, nor is it 'always' fatal, nor can you do much about catching it....Of course we have many things to worry about on our planet. People are eating less beef in general and that is probably a good thing for all kinds of reasons.

New testing has found that prions are found in the nose of infected cows and people; the Italians are working on a quick test for cows from the nose.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/2788509.stm

Armetise,

I heard about the incubation period and that is very scary and should be taken serious. As a matter of fact, on a weekend medical show I like to watch the expert physicial stated he expected to see a surge in deaths due to BSE in the UK in the next few years.

I hope no one took my post as not believing this to be a serious issue, because I really do. I just don't think we shouldn't panic.

Downer cows should never be slaughtered for meat. A system should be in place to track cattle from birth to table. A higher percentage of our cattle should be tested for BSE. There are many things we must do to make sure our food supply is safer.

Let's hope this serves as a warning and our leadership listens and acts.

So far, the American government appears to be making all the same mistakes with BSE as the British one did in the early stages of our "crisis".

The first impulse is to deny that there is a problem - "I'll be eating beef", a philosophy that the then UK agriculture secretary, John Gummer, famously espoused by feeding a fairground beefburger to his young daughter in front of the cameras.

If the US continues to follow the UK pattern, you've got a few years of denial to look forward to - at least until after the next election. Then you'll start to hear about a few cases of people who died who were originally thought to have had Parkinsonism or similar degenerative brain disorders who are retrospectively diagnosed as having had CJD.

I shouldn't worry overmuch about the import bans imposed - most US raised meat is consumed in the US, just as most British meat was consumed in Britain. Indeed, the whole EU has limited US exports for many years because of the hormones and antibiotics that are routinely used as growth promoters over there.

Incidentally, while an infective process based on prions are postulated as the cause of BSE, CJD, etc., there is as yet no conclusive proof that they are the primary cause. A rival school of thought is that the ubiquity of organophosphorus compounds as pesticides in industrial agriculture is the cause. This may not even be incompatible with the prion theory - it may be that the OPs cause the initial protein deformation which is then self-sustaining.

As an aside, I wonder whether dedicated carnivores (the cat family, for example) ever suffer from prion diseases (lions do eat each other very occasionally) and if they do not, what stops them from getting them.

What is not in doubt is that industrialised agriculture is responsible for BSE. Meat and bone meal are only used in animal feeds because they are a cheap source of protein, and they are only a cheap source of protein because industrial agriculture makes meat so cheaply. Smaller scale meat production based on grass is not only healthier for the animals (meaning they don't need as many antibiotic doses), but produces meat that tastes better - surely something we should move towards, even if it means we can't afford to eat it quite as often? And wouldn't that be a better way of living anyway, given the increasing rates of obesity that we're seeing in all Western economies?

Nothing from a slaughterd animal goes to waste, not only hamburger, but lunch meats, pet food, Jell O, all contain the remains of Beef cows and other animals.
And you cannot kill Prions.

I have tried to keep up somewhat with this disease, and found an article from one scientist who thinks this could be caused by a pesticide, to control the Warble fly in live stock. It is also very similiar to a disease known as Manganeese Madness, and the pesticides have this metal in them.

My hunch is we are at much greater risk than we are being told.

And a mere week later, I paid $6.78/lb. for the same cut. It apparently is causing a dramatic drop in the price of beef overall. Perhaps I should be concerned, but having located only one affected cow in the entire United States doesn't personally seem to be that big a threat.

I'm not sure how concerned to be about this. On the one hand, the odds of getting it are very low, even if the U.S. problem were as bad as Britain's. OTOH, it is a particularly horrible way to die, so this is one lottery I'd rather not play.

I personally will be eating no beef at all unless I know for certain it came from the safe cuts, and preferably certified organic (meaning the cattle were raised wtihout the use of antibiotics, growth hormones or feed containing animal protein). Easy for me to say, since I've been cutting down drastically on meat consumption for other reasons, namely that I'm convinced the typical American diet contains way too much meat and too little fruits and vegetables for a healthy balance.

On a side note: I'm not seeing any ideological difference on this. Republicans, Democrats, conservatives, liberals, libertarians may all may be equally concerned.

This disease is caused by a deficiency in magnesium (not manganese). It is seen in the spring time occasionally when the first grass comes in. This lush vegetation is deficient in magnesium and can lead to some crazy acting cattle. I have seen it. It is a cool disease because you can cure it pretty quickly by intravenous solution containing magnesium, similar to treating for milk fever (calcium deficiency causing weakness and muscle tremors) By no stretch of the imagination is this caused by pesticides.

There are major differences between the outbreak in the United Kingdom and the United States. For one, numbers of cases as in millions versus one. Second, animal protein was widely used as feed in the U.K. while this practice is not present in the U.S..

When the B.S.E. outbreak occurred in the U.K., all the rendering plants in the U.S. voluntarily stopped processing sheep. Typically, the response to problems by the agricultural industry is much more rapid and thorough. In Europe, they are still struggling to eliminate the very small farms from making backyard swill.

Blaming prions on insecticides, hormones, or antibiotics is a huge stretch and has no basis in reality. It is a grabbag of old issues not linked to prions. How does one explain Chronic Wasting Disease in the wild deer population of Wisconsin with such nonsense? We do have more to learn about prion diseases. There is no theory to explain how natural transmission of the disease occurs. (I wonder if there is not some sort of head to head transmission via wounds as these diseases a prominent in species which tend to headbutt each other: deer and sheep.)

I expect prion disease are in all species but very low incidence. You only see an explosion of incidence via humans feeding affected tissue to many other animals. I do not know why it is more common in deer, elk, or sheep.

Will there be more to learn to improve health safety? Certainly. Taking downer cattle out of the food chain is step forward. They are not much of a risk but they are more of a risk than those cattle able to stand. Downer cattle are just not worth that much in their weak condition. Owners will now euthanize them and send them to a renderer instead of carting them to a slaughter facility. Downers are a miniscule part of the slaughter business.

Of concern to me is the use of blood in milk replacer. This is another potential chink in the armor which should be closed. It is a major economic concern as ten per cent of the cattle's weight is blood. That is a lot of product to toss out. Perhaps an enzyme treatment to shorten the protein chains would be a sufficient precaution.

The immediate question is one of actual risk versus perceived risk. There are many more risky behaviors than eating beef. People still do risky behaviors. I hope people are looking at actual risk instead of perceived ones when making their decisions.

The difference between here in the US and the UK a few years ago is that we were able to catch it early and contain it (hopefully) to prevent a wider disaster and keep the economic damage to a minimum. In the UK, it appeared and sprang up like wildfire and it was hard to contain it. Also, the US had banned the use of that type of feed that everyone keeps talking about.