Mad cow disease

Q&A: Should mad cow disease worry me?

Is it safe to eat my Christmas roast?

USDA officials say they are confident all U.S. beef is safe despite this incident of presumed mad cow disease. In addition, whole cuts of beef - steaks, chops, roasts - are generally safe to eat because mad cow disease is not known to affect the cattle's muscle meat.

Mad cow disease, the layperson's term for bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or BSE, is a slowly progressive, degenerative, fatal disease affecting the central nervous system of adult cattle. It can be present in an animal for four to seven years before symptoms appear and is known as mad cow disease because in its final stages, the animal is disoriented, irritable and unable to stand or walk properly.

BSE is a disease that affects cattle. However, there is a disease similar to BSE called variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, which humans can contract by eating certain parts of infected cattle. Those parts are believed to be the lower part of the small intestine, the brain and spinal cord. It can also be contracted through blood transfusions. The human form of mad cow disease so far has killed 143 people in Britain and 10 elsewhere, none in the United States.

A release from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Wednesday said, "The risk to human health from BSE in the United States is extremely low." And Dr. Fred Cohen, a professor of pharmacology at the University of California at San Francisco who is an expert on mad cow disease, said Americans should take comfort from statistics. When the U.K. had 60,000 to 80,000 infected cows, fewer than 150 people out of 60-million developed the disease. In the United States, he said, "One cow is not likely to translate into any cases."

The disease primarily affects younger people - the CDC says the median age of those who have died from it is 29. It is very hard to diagnose until it has nearly run its course. In its early stages, the disease may manifest itself through neurologic symptoms, but brain abnormalities don't appear on X-rays or MRIs until the latter stages of the disease. Symptoms include dementia, weakened muscles and loss of balance. Scientists believe symptoms begin many years - perhaps 10 or more - after a tainted product was eaten.

Fast-food chains, including McDonald's Corp., Wendy's and Checkers Drive-Thru Restaurants, issued statements Wednesday saying the meat packer involved in the Washington state incident had no connection to their supply chains. The Center for Science in the Public Interest, meanwhile, recommends that consumers avoid ground beef unless they grind it themselves from a whole piece of muscle meat.

Experts recommend avoiding hot dogs, sausage, salami, bologna and other products that contain meat that might have been taken from close to the cow's spinal column or may contain soft organ meat. You can also limit your risk by eating organic or grass-fed beef, as those cattle are not fed any animal remains.

No.

Beef from the infected cow has been recalled. However, because beef is a commodity that is often transported to consumers far from its point of origin, it is possible for Washington beef to end up in Florida supermarkets or restaurants. Authorities can trace meat to a particular packing plant and, in some cases, to a certain feedlot or farm. A batch of ground beef, which may mix meat from many cows, may be traceable only to a group of farms rather than a single farm.

It has been recalled, although USDA officials downplayed any risk to humans, saying the parts of the cow that would be infected - the brain, the spinal cord and the lower part of the small intestine - had been removed before the animal went to a meat processing plant.

Out of what the USDA calls "an abundance of caution," however, the meat-packing plant in Moses Lake, Wash., where the cow had been slaughtered Dec. 9, is voluntarily recalling 10,410 pounds of raw beef processed that day.

Canadian officials identified a single case of BSE, in a cow in Alberta, in May, which devastated the country's $6-billion (U.S.) cattle industry. More than 2,700 cows from farms in Alberta and neighboring provinces were destroyed. And a number of countries, including the United States, banned the importing of Canadian beef.

In August, the United States lifted the ban to allow importation of certain cuts of Canadian beef, although imports of live cattle are still forbidden. No cases of variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease have been diagnosed in Canada, and the origin of the isolated case has not been determined.

We don't know for sure. All we know is that this is the first cow slaughtered that has tested positive as part of the Agriculture Department's surveillance system. Last year the monitoring system tested more than 20,000 animals in the United States.

The Web sites for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (www.cdc.gov) and USDA (www.usda.gov) carry updates on the Washington state incident.

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