One process used on a cow carcass is to remove meat from the bone with machines using high-pressure water jets. (2) This method also strips off bone and spinal cord material, which is likely to be highly infectious in a sick cow. It is pooled into beef patties, meat pies, and pasta fillings; meat from as many as 60 animals may go into a hamburger mix. Each batch contains meat from about 1,000 animals, any one of which could infect the whole, and expose as many as 400,000 persons to the agent. An agency of the U.S. Department of Agriculture pointed out that about 35% of samples from advanced meat and bone separation machinery had ''unacceptable nervous tissues'' detected. Also, 29% and 10% of the samples had spinal cord tissue and dorsal nerve root ganglia tissue detected, respectively, according to the Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS). (15) Meat that is cut close to the bone, such as T-bones and ribs, can have traces of spinal cord tissue. (20) Processed beef products such as hamburger, hot dogs, sausage (believed to be the source of most human BSE infections in Europe), and pizza toppings can have traces of spinal cord tissue. Although brain and spinal cord material are banned from meat, a 2002 USDA survey found these tissues in beef products at 74 percent of the plants tested. The stun gun method that splattered brain material into the liver has just been banned (82).
The suppression of this information and the lack of surveillance over the years could result in tremendous loss of human and animal life, as the disease eventually expresses itself. It can reportedly take an average of 13 years, and as much as 40 years before symptoms are seen in humans, and it is always fatal. (1) In the British outbreak, the disease was found to occur in people under 30, even teenagers, which is rare (53). In 1996, the death of two teenagers from CJD in America was reported in the English press (69). By 1995, more British farmers were being diagnosed as having the disease (53). Waiting until the first case of BSE is diagnosed in the United States will certainly be "closing the barn door after the horse is gone," says R. F. Marsh, DVM, PhD. (45) “With a disease having a 3- to 6-year incubation period, thousands of animals would be exposed before we recognize the problem and, if that happens, we would be in for a decade of turmoil” (60).
As of 2002, there were 830 deaths in Great Britain due to CJD (55). The number of definite or probable variant CJD (BSE-caused) cases were 122. Other European countries also report human deaths from BSE-contaminated meat. One problem emerging is that when a country announces that it has a BSE problem, it loses its international trade markets, which can be financially devastating (53). So, many countries appear simply not to be reporting their cases of BSE. This then allows their contaminated products to be imported into other countries, such as the U.S., that are ostensibly dealing only with BSE-free nations.
If this hypothesis of the disease transmission proves correct, the man-made cycle of using dead animals as feed for other animals ensures that the disease will be perpetuated. Our pets would play an important role in this cycle, as they are fed the contaminated food and are in turn used as contaminated food themselves.
It is believed that this is a pandemic disease, an epidemic that is worldwide. (29) And a quiet one, because the cause and effect are not easily linked, because the symptoms do not appear until years after the initial infection, because the existence of the disease and its transmissibility are being denied by Governments, because the disease is not being adequately monitored, because interests of countries and meat industries are taking precedence over human lives, and because too little is being done too late to prevent it.
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|Introduction|Rendering|Controversy|Causes|Prions|Conclusion|References|
