Though it is nearly certain that spongiform encephalopathy is transmitted from one species to another through contaminated food products, the British government steadfastly maintained that transmission to human beings was inconceivable. But then, in March 1996, the British government acknowledged that 10 cases of a new variant of the rare human form of spongiform encephalopathy called Creutzfeldt-Jacob disease (CJD) were probably caused by eating beef from BSE-infected cattle.
The U.S. government confidently assures Americans that since British beef was banned from our shores way back in 1989, we have nothing to worry about....but do we really?
Dr. Richard Marsh, an expert on animal encephalopathies at the University of Wisconsin, has reported on experiments in which brain matter from scrapie-infected American sheep was injected into the brains of cows. The infected cows developed BSE but their symptoms differed from the "mad cows" of Britain. While BSE-infected cows in Britain went "mad" before dying, BSE-infected cows in America simply fell down and died. The sudden death of these American BSE-infected cows is remarkably similar to the symptoms of cows with a condition known as "downer cow syndrome" which affects about 100,000 U.S. cattle each year. Downer cows are either sent to the slaughterhouse where they are disassembled for human consumption or to the rendering plant where they are boiled down into protein supplements that are fed to cattle and other animals. In 1985, at a Wisconsin mink farm where 95% of the feed came from downer cows, the entire ranch was wiped out by an outbreak of mink encephalopathy. Though circumstantial, Dr. Marsh believes this evidence appears to show that a form of BSE manifesting itself as downer cow syndrome has infected U.S. cattle herds.
Other evidence draws a possible link to human CJD infection in the United States. A study conducted at the University of Pittsburgh in 1989 sought to test the accuracy of the clinical diagnosis of dementia. In this study, 54 demented patients were autopsied. Most had Alzheimer's disease or other central nervous system disorders, but 3 were found to have CJD. It was further noted that, while alive, the symptoms of these 3 patients resembled Alzheimer's much more so than the classic symptoms of CJD. If these findings are representative of the general population, then literally thousands of cases of CJD have gone undetected among Americans who have been diagnosed with dementia.
Unlike the British government, the United States government has not banned the practice of feeding rendered animal protein to cattle. Dairy cows are most at risk for contracting BSE because they live longer than beef cattle which allows the infectious agent more time to incubate; and, to increase milk production, dairy cows are fed larger portions of rendered animal protein. Also, dairy cows that are injected with the genetically engineered bovine growth hormone - rBGH - are fed even larger quantities of rendered animal proteins to even further increase milk production. Thus far, milk is not suspected as a vector for CJD, but in the United States over 2.6 billion pounds of hamburger meat each year is made from ground-up "retired" dairy cows. The biggest buyers of this possibly BSE-infected meat are fast food joints like McDonald's and Burger King.
One final note, CJD can incubate in an infected person for up to 30 years before symptoms become apparent, so it will be quite some time before we know the full extent of a CJD epidemic in the human population. In the meantime, anyone care for a veggie burger?
Copyright Mendocino Environmental Center 1996
Permission granted to excerpt or use this article if source is cited