Half-Truths on Mad Cow Disease

Worried consumers have also been told that there is no scientific evidence showing that people can contract the human variant of mad cow disease when beef has been slaughtered in a way that strips brain and spinal cord tissue away from muscle. The USDA said the infected dairy cow was slaughtered in this way.

el - This is a half-truth. Would you expect anything else from an administration addicted to lies and beholden to corporate interests. Prions can be transmitted by lymph nodes and muscle and separate studies show it present in blood and nerves. On the FDA site itself, unless they quickly remove it, they say experiments with mice have shown the disease is present in the muscle tissue. Meat is all muscle tissue.

Dean had a very informative speech criticizing the Bush administration for blocking policies that would have prevented the disease from getting into sold hamburger meat and also policies making beef easier to track.

And more news: The good news about the 1997 infected beef crisis in Great Britain is that it only killed 130 people. The bad news is that people have been dying from meat they ate 10 years ago.

One of the characteristics of the brain-wasting disease is a dormant period, both in the infected animal and in humans who contracted Creutzfeldt-Jacob Disease, which researchers believe is connected to BSE, the author said.

[One major scientist] believes that chronic wasting disease (CWD) running rampant through state deer populations is in the same disease family.

“Most deer that have tested positive for CWD have looked healthy,” he said. “It’s only in the last stages that the symptoms show up.”

Although there were 35 to 37 million cattle slaughtered last year in America, Stauber claims the government tested just 20,000 for the wasting disease.

Stauber said government reports have indicated that the infectious protein or prion is only found in the brain tissue or spine of an infected animal, but other studies point to nerves and blood vessels as another potential source of contamination in the meat supply.

Tech Central is more than spreading half-truths, it is paid propaganda for agri-business. The article is worthless and misleading pseudo-science.