If you eat meat, you already have to worry about salmonella, E. coli, campylobacter, heart disease, strokes, high blood pressure, and cancer, as well as your weight. Now add mad cow disease to the list. The Canadian government has announced that a cow slaughtered in January in Alberta was infected with mad cow disease, also called bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE).
This cow was 8 years old, but if she, like most Canadian cows, had been killed before age 2, we would never have known that she had mad cow disease. Since cows are so young when killed, and pigs and chickens are even younger, it’s possible that other animals also have spongy brain disease, but it has not been discovered because animals are slaughtered before they become symptomatic. Why gamble? The best thing that anyone can do for their health and for animals is to adopt a vegetarian diet.
What Is Mad Cow Disease?
BSE is caused by malformed proteins called prions. Researchers have traced the disease to farmers’ cost-cutting practice of mixing bits of dead sheep’s neural tissue into the feed of cattle, who are naturally herbivorous. If cattle eat the brains of cattle who already have BSE, or of sheep suffering from a sheep disease called scrapie, the cattle can develop mad cow disease. When people eat the infected cattle, they could develop the human version of the disease, new variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (nvCJD). Millions of cattle suspected of being infected with BSE in England, Scotland, Ireland, France, Belgium, Italy, and other countries have been slaughtered.
Whether it strikes cattle or people, mad cow disease is always fatal. The disease eats holes in the brain. In humans, it initially causes memory loss and erratic behavior, and over a period of months, its victims gradually lose all ability to care for themselves or communicate, and eventually, they die.
Is Mad Cow in U.S. Cattle?
The U.S. Department of Agriculture says no but admits that it tested fewer than 20,000 cattle for BSE last year—a statistically insignificant percentage of the more than 37 million cattle slaughtered. Most cattle are slaughtered before their second birthday and are too young to show symptoms even though the disease may be present in their tissue.
The dangerous practice of feeding sheep and even cattle to other cattle was not banned in the U.S. and Canada until 1997, and the U.S. government said that as recently as 2001, there was widespread violation of the feeding regulation. It is still legal to feed sheep and cattle to pigs and chickens, and pigs and chickens to one another (and cattle) as well, even though these practices have been banned in Europe and no one can be sure if this may prove deadly in the future as well.
Other forms of brain encephalopathies have been found in North America. Two years ago, 200 dairy sheep from a Vermont farm were killed on suspicion that they were infected with their species’ equivalent of mad cow disease. Chronic wasting disease, a similar condition, is widespread in deer and elk in Western Canada and the U.S. and is suspected of infecting hunters who may have eaten meat from sick animals.
Can You Protect Yourself?
Yes! The best way is to stop eating all animal products and instead eat a healthy vegan diet because that not only protects you from mad cow, it also helps more than anything else in preventing foodborne illness, heart disease, strokes, and many other ailments. Click here for a FREE vegetarian starter kit to help you get started.
