Mad Cow: Coming Soon to a Grill Near You?

Newspapers, radio, and television stations across the country blasted the news:  Canada has its first Mad Cow.

The Canadian government leapt into action.  Like a well-oiled censorship machine it gave only the smallest amount of information to the media and the Canadian people.  After all, they wouldn’t want a panic situation like the one in Britain that almost wiped out the entire beef industry there. 

People are not the only ones who suffer the affects of unnatural additives in their food supply.  The animals that we depend on for food, and in turn depend on us to feed them, are also at risk of human engineered food additives.  Just as MSG and Aspartame can be dangerous to humans, ingredients in the diets of the cattle, sheep, pigs, and chickens can be harmful to them.

It was these additives that caused the Mad Cow epidemic in Great Britain, leading to the infection and destruction of almost a million cattle and the tragic death of 129 people.

Mad Cow disease is known medically as bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE).  It is a disease that can pass between species and is fatal in 100% of its cases.  Strains of transmissible spongiform encephalopathy(TSE) have been found to kill sheep, deer, elk, mice, cattle, chimpanzees, domestic house cats and even humans.

In 1986, the first case of Mad Cow disease appeared in Great Britain.  The British government learned that the cause of the disease was directly linked to the nutritional additives fed to their livestock.  For years farmers had been feeding their cattle with feed made from ground up cattle meat and bones. 

The farmers had turned their grass-eating cows into cannibals. 

What would make farmers turn this gentle animal into a carnivorous beast?

Profit.

Decades ago, pharmaceutical giants like Monsanto created bovine growth hormones that when given to cattle had amazing results.  Dairy cows would produce substantially more milk, and butcher cattle would grow meat faster and in greater amounts.

The downside of this diet was that it required the cattle to be fed larger amounts of protein then they could get in the standard farm diet.  Feed suppliers came to the answer with a product referred to as by-pass protein.  This supplement has large amounts of protein in it.  While plant based protein supplements are available, the ones made from animal products are usually cheaper. 

Farmers gravitated to the cheaper feed and soon feeding dead cows to live cows became a standard process.

In 1988, the government of the U.K. declared a ban on this cannibalistic practice, and hoped that this would end the feared epidemic.  The action seems to have helped, but it was too little too late. 

By the year 2002, mad cow disease had spread to 181, 376 cattle.

Almost a million head of cattle had to be destroyed to stop the contagion.

Throughout the epidemic, the government swore that Mad Cow disease could not be transmitted to humans through the eating of beef.  Prime Minister John Major promoted the safety of beef by eating steak on national television.

The British population believed him, until the first human died in 1996 from the horrific disease.  The human strain of transmissible spongiform encephalopathy is referred to as variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD).

Variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease is a terrible degenerative disease that begins with the victims behaving in a depressed or paranoid way.  They become progressively demented, followed by loss of bodily control, coma, and death.  According to the World Health Organization, 129 people have died in the U.K. from vCJD contracted from food contaminated with Mad Cow disease.[1]  The disease seems to strike young people, with teenagers and young adults making up the majority of the victims.

The first human death from eating contaminated beef appeared in 1996, ten years after the first case of Mad Cow, and 8 years after the government of the U.K. banned the exercise of feeding ground up cows to cattle.

The governments of Canada and United States have watched the disaster across the ocean, but have been slow in learning from Britain’s mistakes.  Bovine growth hormones have also been used heavily in here, and our cattle have been fed ground up cows for years.  Though this disgusting practice was banned in Great Britain in 1988, the cattle in Canada and the U.S. continued to dine on their brothers, sisters, parents and even offspring until 1997.  Only in 1997, once it was confirmed that Mad Cow disease could kill people, did these governments adopt policies to stop the practice that creates the mad cow disease.

In Britain it was a case of too little too late.  What will be the case here?

The U.S. and Canada have stopped the feeding of cows to cattle, but they can still be fed meat and bone meal from pigs, horses, and chickens.  Cattle, whose digestive systems are designed to live on plant matter, are still on a carnivorous diet.  The governments overlook a disastrous loophole:  Diseased cows can be fed to chickens; ground up chickens can be fed back to cows.  The agent that causes Mad Cow disease can collect in chickens, and then be fed back to the cows.  Thus the virus that causes Mad Cow can still find its way back into the cow feed it was banned from.

In many rendering plants, the new regulation to stop putting cow meat into cow feed has not been followed.  In United States between 1998 and 2000, “FDA and state inspectors visited 9,184 rendering firms to increase awareness of the BSE regulation only to find that 1,688 of the firms were not aware of the new regulation."[2]  Even after the federally mandated ban, almost 20 percent of rendering plants inspected were still bagging cattle meat as cow feed.  How confident can we be in the government’s attempts to avoid a mad cow epidemic?

The Canadian government has been very careful in the information that they pass on to the media.  Included in this selective censorship is any detailed information regarding the high infection risk of Mad Cow disease.

Noted scientist Stanley Prusiner developed the primary theory behind the cause of spongiform encephalopathy in the 1980’s.  Prusiner discovered a protein strain that he named ‘prion.’ 

Prions (pronounced pree-on) are found to occur in mammals.  The problem occurs when a defective prion is introduced in the body and programs the host DNA to change the existing prions into mutant ones.  These mutant prion molecules seem to affect the brain matter of the host, causing sponge like holes to appear.

Prions do not behave like standard viruses.  They are strands of amino acids that do not have DNA, and are not even alive.  As such they are unable to be killed by sterilization, irradiation, or even heating to 600 degrees Fahrenheit. 

A great deal of research supports Prusiner’s theory.  Unfortunately, the research also proved his theory that infectious prions are almost impossible to destroy.  Electrodes that had been used on the brain of a woman with CJD transferred the disease to two other humans that they were later used on.  After two years, three cleanings and repeated sterilization with ethanol and formaldehyde, the electrodes were implanted into the brain of a chimpanzee.  The chimpanzee contracted CJD and died.[3]

Most scientists scoffed at Prusiner’s theory, but in 1996, his research on prions won him the Nobel Prize.  Now his theory is regarded as the foremost scientific explanation for the transmission of this deadly disease.

The World Health Organization recognizes Prusiner’s research, and reports that the only effective way to completely stop the risk of infection from BSE contaminated objects is to incinerate them.  Standard methods of chemical disinfection and heat sterilization are not fully effective at reducing the prions ability to infect other life forms.[4]

Agriculture Canada claimed that the contaminated cow first discovered in January 2003 in Alberta did not present a threat to the food supply.  The inspector at the slaughterhouse that discovered the sickly cow marked it unfit for human consumption.   The cow was disemboweled using the same equipment that afterwards cut up cattle destined for Canadian dinner plates. Its organs were spread across an examining table.  The head was severed from the body and sent to a government site to be tested.  The inspector determined that the meat was unfit for human consumption and sent it to a rendering plant. 

Three months later, testing proved that the cow was infected with the Mad Cow prion.  Three months had gone by during which an unidentified number of cows were cut up using the same implements that butchered the infected cow. If hospital sterilization methods cannot disinfect contaminated implements, what chance do the wash down procedures at a slaughterhouse have?

The prions left at the slaughterhouse are not the only ones consumers should worry about.  The carcass of the infected cow was sent to a rendering plant, where the meat and bones were ground up to make animal feed and pet food, or boiled to make gelatin.  The bags of feed were sold to farmers, to be fed to pigs and chickens.  It is believed that neither pigs nor chickens are susceptible to the mutant prion disorder, but there is no evidence that the infective mad cow agent does not remain dormant in the tissues of either animal.  From there it could be fed to humans, or end up in feed served back to cattle.

Unfortunately, the pet food situation is much more frightening.  According to an FDA report dated May 26^th, 2003, the government of Canada informed them that its first Mad Cow could have been rendered into dry dog food and sold to the American market under the brand name Pet Pantry of America. Since the cow was turned into pet food in February, the bags of food could have already been sold and fed to dogs.  The FDA report goes on to say that dogs do not contract bovine spongiform encephalopathy and says that there’s no evidence that dogs can transmit it to humans.[5]   The FDA however, is terribly short on details.  The warning does not inform the consumer that human handling of the dry dog food could transmit the prion contaminant to humans.  They completely avoid telling people who have a dog and cat in the house that cats have proven to be susceptible to infection from BSE prions, and that many domestic cats in the United Kingdom have died from the disease.  Prions themselves are not destroyed when they pass through a dog’s digestive system, so dog food made from the Mad Cow may end up covering someone’s lawn with prion-infected landmines.

Long after Canada’s first Mad Cow was found, the byproducts of its demise are haunting consumers across North America.

The prions that cause transmissible spongiform encephalopathy tend to collect in the brain, spinal column, nerve tissue, bones and lymphatic system of the cow.  This news is what the government points at to suggest that eating beef is safe.  If they really believe that prions aren’t found anywhere else in cattle’s infected bodies, why is the Canadian Blood Service that collects and supplies the nation with blood refusing to except blood donations from anyone who has spent more than 3 months in Great Britain since 1980.  Is blood and the meat that it’s in really that safe?  The FDA even stated in 1996 that blood donations should no longer be taken from those who have come from the United Kingdom.  In 1999 they revised this warning to include anyone who may have used bovine insulin produced from there.[6]  So what aren’t these agencies telling us?

When Shirley McClellan, Alberta’s minister of agriculture mimicked Britain’s Prime Minister by posing for the photo-op of her eating a juicy steak, was it well done or rare?  Not that it matters; cooking can’t destroy prions.

Rendering plants, like the one that Canada’s first mad cow went to, boil up the connective tissues and bones to create gelatin.  This gelatin is then sold to many processing companies.  Gelatin is one of the 650 products made from cattle for human use.[7]  Gelatin is especially popular in candy, jello and marshmallows, all of which are highly desired by children. 

The WHO states that substances like “gelatin are considered safe if prepared by a manufacturing process which has been shown experimentally to inactivate the transmissible agent.”[8]  Strangely enough, the only process that the WHO states can completely inactivate prions is incineration.  The processes that produce gelatin do not come close to such temperature extremes. 

The by-products of rendering plants are not just used in food.  They are also found in cosmetics, drugs, vaccines, insulin, even the collagen that women have injected into their faces for beauty’s sake.   Both collagen[9] and gelatin[10] have been considered possible sources for mad cow transmission to humans.

Rendering plants are a weak link in the nations food supply.  They are the final destination for the chickens, pigs, deer and cattle that are not fit for human consumption.  One city in United States was even caught sending euthanized dogs and cats from their animal control building to a rendering plant to be added to the mix.[11]  Imagine feeding that to your dog or cat. 

We count on these rendering plants for much of the protein feed supplements that go to feed the chickens, pigs, and cattle that we consume on a daily basis.  Does it give us confidence knowing that most of the animals used at these plants were too diseased or unhealthy to feed us directly?  The cattle that are sent to these plants are referred to as ‘downer cows’ meaning they do not have the strength to stand up again once they have lain down.  Many of these cows are sent for rendering without any tests to see what their ailment was.  If the cow in Canada had not been suffering from pneumonia-like symptoms, and had its brain sent for further testing, what would have happened?  How many infected cows have passed through undetected already?

Every week in Canada, over 90 million pounds of cattle that have died of ‘natural causes’ are rendered[12] into hundreds of products for use all over North America.  Of these cattle, only the smallest percentage is tested to see if they died from Mad Cow disease.

With bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), it is entirely possible that infected cattle might go to slaughter before any symptoms of the disease are observed.  If this were the case, how much of the cattle meat and by-products would find their way to our tables, cosmetics, and medicine cabinets?

We have much to learn from the United Kingdom’s mistakes. Recently it was reported that the U.K. Food Standards Agency discovered that British consumers ate millions of hamburgers containing material that was potentially infected with BSE.  The ground beef in question contained mechanically removed meat from the spines of cattle.  Most of this meat was sent to school and institutional cafeterias.[13]  The spinal column and nerve tissues are some of the body parts considered by the World Health Organization to be the most infectious.

The government needs to be more honest with consumers about the full ramifications of a Mad Cow epidemic.  Britain kept its people in the dark, promoting the safety of eating beef in spite of the disease.  129 people died because of their propaganda, how many more will?

Chronic Wasting Disease

Cattle aren’t the only carriers of transmissible spongiform encephalopathy (TSE).  United States and Canada are quietly suffering from an epidemic of ‘Mad Deer.’

When mutant prions infect deer the result is called Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD).  Infected deer become listless, walk irregularly, and finally die from irreversible weight loss.  First discovered in Colorado in 1967, this disease has now spread to encompass deer herds in Wyoming, Nebraska, Saskatchewan, and even Alberta.

In Alberta the disease has struck both deer and elk.  Over 15,000 of these animals are killed each year in Alberta alone.  Rendering plants will no longer process their carcasses due to chance of prion infection.  Their bodies are ending up in the landfills and ditches all over Alberta.[14] 

As these bodies decompose, the infective prions within them may make their way into the soil and ground water.  CWD has been found to infect deer simply from being present on the ground the deer graze on.[15]

Tragically, CWD is transmissible between species.  It has been discovered that young cattle injected with CWD from deer have developed the disease and when autopsied had mutant prions in their brain matter.[16]  With CWD infecting deer in areas heavily populated by cattle, how long will it be before the disease creates an epidemic in the species used for the human food supply?

The prion threat is real, and unless serious precautions are taken, America may see the same devastation that the U.K did, not only to its cattle, but to its people as well.