I was perusing the news and saw an article in Tech Times about a beef recall last week with possible links to mad cow disease. I was afraid that was about to come up again. The recall is from a factory out of Missouri for 4,000 pounds of beef, which I’d say is a relatively small amount compared to previous recalls. For example, in May, almost two million pounds of ground beef were recalled due to E. coli.
Mad Cow is the nickname for a disease that cows get called BSE (Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy) because it affects their central nervous system. When people eat meat that comes from cows with BSE they can become fatally ill with a human form called Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD), but it’s still nick-named Mad Cow because it’s easier than Creutzfeldt-Jakob. What has bothered me since first learning of the disease, is that the symptoms of CJD sound an awful lot like Alzheimer’s: dementia that causes memory loss, hallucinations, personality changes, depression, paranoia, speech impairment and seizures before death. My grandma suffered from Alzheimer’s for years before dying, and these were her symptoms. People who die from Alzheimer’s generally do not have an autopsy to test for CJD. One of the studies comparing types of dementia looked at twelve patients in whom the clinical diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease was made and found BSE present in three of them.[1] I get a quarterly newsletter from the Alzheimer Association (alz.org) and there are currently 5 million Americans diagnosed with Alzheimer’s.
Usually cows get BSE from eating animal products including ground-up meat from “downed” animals (those that fall, often with broken bones, and cannot be used for human consumption). The FDA now bans animal feeding operations from feeding their cattle dead cow meat, cow’s blood, and chicken waste, but it is a hard mandate to monitor.[2] The FDA ban on feeding cow protein to cows makes an exception for blood products and fat. The rules still permit feedlots to feed other animals’ protein to cows. Feather meal and chicken litter (bedding, feces, and discarded bits of feed) are accepted cattle feeds, as are chicken, fish, and pig meal. Some public health experts worry that since the bovine meat and bonemeal that cows used to eat is now being fed to chickens, pigs, and fish, infectious prions could find their way back into cattle when they’re fed the protein of the animals that have been eating them.[3]
Another disconcerting fact is that the incubation period for CJD could be many, even 20 or 30, years. In other words, whenever a person develops it from consuming a BSE-contaminated product, he or she likely would have consumed that product many years or a decade or more earlier.[4]
Last week’s recall was due to the possibility of older (>3 years) cows’ brains and spinal tissue having gotten into the beef during processing, which is another way humans can contract the disease. Last month, a man in Texas died of CJD but the Center for Disease Control (CDC) said not to worry because he traveled a lot and probably ate the contaminated meat overseas.
[1] Teixeira, Alonso, et al., “Clinico–pathological correlation in dementias,” Journal of Psychiatry & Neuroscience, Jul 1995; 20(4): 276–282.
[2] Harvest for Hope: A Guide to Mindful Eating, Jane Goodall with Gary McAvoy and Gail Hudson, Warner Books, 2005.
[3] Michael Pollan, the Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals, Penguin Press, 2006.
[4] Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Fact Sheet: Variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease, June 3, 2014.