Mad Mooey

 

Much ink has been spilled over Mad Cow Disease.  Even so, I didn't really know much about it until the last few weeks.  This most likely is at least partly because the news was downplayed, if not actually a pack of lies.   Maybe also willful ignorance on my part.  

I had stopped eating beef a year ago.  Nothing to do with fears of Mad Cow Disease.  I had spent big money on Angus burgers, because I had had so much trouble tolerating most of the other hamburger or even steak.  They were, and maybe still are, putting "pink stuff" in the beef, that really turned me inside out.  "Oh, get Angus," said Mrs. Billingsley.  Weeeeell...  My Angus experience took gross to a whole new level.  I've even tried to eat beef since then and just can't force it down.  So, I gave up on beef.  If what I saw that terrible day was true, and it was, I knew that there was trouble in the meat industry.   

Then what?  Eat chicken, pork, fish.  I began to practically live off barbeque.   The next thing to go was dairy.  This was also due to my own intolerance of dairy.  Nothing mooey in my diet.  

So why is it that swine seems to be immune to prions?  Well, they are resistant, not quite immune.  There are no known cases of naturally transmitted spongiform encephalopathy in swine.  They are partially immune to meat industry shenanigans.   The hogs aren't a source of milk, since that just doesn't work very well.  The Mad Cow Disease started because our cousins in the UK decided to feed dairy cows meat renderings of all sorts in the form of feed pellets.  This included sheep carcasses with scrapie, since scrapie was not thought to be contagious.  Bad idea.  Meat protein had been found to increase the weight of cows, and also increase milk production.  However, this feed was not usually given to hogs because hogs didn't need much encouragement to gain weight, and they weren't used for milk.   But when the contaminated feed was given to hogs, there was still no known transmission of prion disease.  

Oh, Mad Cow wasn't and isn't a problem in the US.  Really?  In 1985 a mink farm in Wisconsin had an outbreak of a prion brain disease, "Mad Mink Disease," in 4,400 mink.  The farmer had been a careful keeper of records, and documented that the mink had been fed meat derived from downer cows from neighboring dairy farms.   At about that time, Chronic Wasting Disease became a nationwide epidemic among deer and elk.  Two hunters in their twenties died of CJD.  "Nothing to do with hunting or hamburgers," it was found.  Just an unfortunate sporadic event that happened twice.  Somehow, in Kentucky, folks developed prion disease after eating squirrel brains, which was considered "a delicacy."   The same thing happened in Texas.  In Georgia, brain sandwiches made from cow brains are still eaten.  OK, another bad idea.  And only a month ago, a 21 year old woman in Arizona died of CJD.  This was diagnosed as sporadic, and just a one in a million fluke.  Some experts have even gone so far as to assert that CJD can't be transmitted by eating infected meat.  In addition, it was recently found that up to 13% of autopsied Alzheimer's patients were victims, not of Alzheimer's, but CJD.   Some experts have set the percentage as high as 25%.    

Surely we've learned our lesson?  No, we still feed dogs and cat food containing renderings from cows, and I suppose sheep with scrapie.  What could go wrong?  

So, I guess I need to let this subject go.   I'll let you know if I come down with CJD.