Mad Cow Disease now in the U.S.

[Mabelline]

Okay, what I meant was that young cattle have sweetbreads,and older cattle absorb them into their system. So I thought perhaps they just thought sweetbreads were responsible, where it might have been the brains,instead.

Then, as far as worrying about the elk, I wouldn't. So far as we up here are aware, the infected herd was an isolated thing, because they were fenced( I know, so they can jump fence), and animals all around the area were spot tested. The reason I called them dorks is because brucellosis is highly contagious, and a lot of people have spent a lot of years eradicating it. Which once again made it real bad that they suspect cattle down in Wyoming of having it.

[Mabelline]

If it's different from what you're talking about, could you be meaning the Chronic Wasting Disease? Oh, yeah, the guy with the elk just happened to be a bud of Ted Turner.

Speaking as an aside; talking here about worrying about possible effects, I just took my little-ol-landlady her dinner and about busted my ass on some ice. So maybe I'm getting a clue to focus my worries?

Edited December 31, 2003 by Mabelline (log)

[fifi]

If it's different from what you're talking about, could you be meaning the Chronic Wasting Disease? Oh, yeah, the guy with the elk just happened to be a bud of Ted Turner.

'nuf said.

You be careful out there, girlfriend.

[Mabelline]

Aw, geez, I'm going to have to say that tails are not spinal cord(hey, zoology was a long time ago) because of one fact-you can dock the tails of nearly any animal, and if there were spinal fluid leaking it'd be a bad thing. Plus, we have a vestigial tailbone, and there's no cord there.

[Pan]

Yeah, but there's clearly some kind of cord in the non-vestigial tails of other vertebrates, including cows. I was going to say it's part of the spinal cord, but I'm not positive.

[fifi]

I am way too many years away from comparative anatomy to answer this question about tails. And all of my anatomy books are packed away. I am not sure about cow tails. And I am not sure about our "tails" having had a very painful experience with mine related to shingles which follows nerves.

Where are the vets here?

[Mabelline]

I found it, but I'm still wondering. The phylum Chordata consists of critters with a"notochord, or dorsal stiffening rod, as the chief internal skeletal support of some stage of their development....The three features unique to chordates are: the notochord,composed of gelatinous tissue and bound by a tough membrane; a tubular nerve cord(or spinal cord), located above the notocord; and gill slits leading into the pharynx.... All have a postanal tail, that is, an extension beyond the anus of the notochord or backbone and of the bodywall musculature, containing no internal organs...In vertibrates:a backbone of bone or cartilage segments called vertibrae develops around the notochord: its upward projections partially surround the nerve cord."

Edited December 31, 2003 by Mabelline (log)

[Nick]

I got admit after reading that, I'm still wondering.

[fifi]

What that means is that all vertbrates have a spinal cord surrounded by the vertebrae. How far the spinal cord goes down the tail is the question. The reason for the question is... should we treat oxtail with the same suspicion that we are neck bones for purposes of stock making or oxtail soup. I have done some googling but I don't know if that is helpful since my search capabilities are rather primitive. I haven't found anything on USDA sites. I may see if I can find a place to submit a question.

[fifi]

I sent an e-mail to fsis.webmaster@usda.gov with the following text. This was the most likely address in that confusing web site.

A cooking group that I am involved with is wondering about the presence of spinal cord tissue in beef parts that are commonly used in making beef stock. Specifically, is there remaining spinal cord in beef neck bones that are sold for stock? Is there spinal cord tissue present in "oxtail" used extensively for stock and for braised dishes and soups.

We will see what comes back.

[Mabelline]

What was kind of weird to me was that the places I went to for bovine anatomy,etc.etc.,blah,blah,blah, really ran me around in circles trying to get an illustrated chart of musculature,nervous system,bone structure. I'm going to try a couple of other aggie-type schools.

But you might be interested in this list of Diseases Acquired From Cattle that popped up all on its own from an obliging South American Veterinary School:

1)Actinomyces pyogenes 2)Anthrax 3)Brucellosis 4)Campylobacteriosis 5)Cowpox 6)Cryptosporidiosis 7)Escherichia coli O157:H7 8)European tick-borne encephalitis 9)Foot and mouth disease 10)Giardiasis 11)Leptospirosis 12)Mycobacterium bovis 13)Pseudocowpox 14)Q-fever 15)Rabies 16)Salmonellosis 17)Slow virus variant (?!? controversial) 18)Streptococcus zooepidemicus 19)Taenia saginata 20)Yersinia entirocolitica

[R Washburn]

I am pretty sure that, with the possible exception of the last vertebra, there is nervous tissue (spinal cord) in the tail. It may also be, though, that the farther the cord is from the brain the lower the titer of prions.

[pete ganz]

It's probably just be a coincidence, but my local Stop & Shop did not have any oxtails for sale the other day. I don't recall them ever being out before.

[Mabelline]

That's why I was so frustrated trying to find a chart to look at that stuff. If you could see the nerves, they'd show you; theoretically, if you could place the end of the vertibrae, it would indicate the end of the nerve cord. Hell, I'm gonna call my butcher up in a little bit.

[Mabelline]

Yes, to me it's close enough to the spinal cord that you are again relying on someone's ability to keep the two things separated. So I nominate beef shanks!

[Richard Kilgore]

U.S. Secretry of Agriculture Announces New Mad Cow Regs, see

NYTimes article.

[fifi]

What was kind of weird to me was that the places I went to for bovine anatomy,etc.etc.,blah,blah,blah, really ran me around in circles trying to get an illustrated chart of musculature,nervous system,bone structure. I'm going to try a couple of other aggie-type schools.

No reply from USDA yet. (Not surprising.)

I will see if I can get anything from the Aggies. (Texas A&M)

[denise_jer]

I don't know if it helps, but I found these two sites:

Oxtail soups, Question #15 and Specified Risk Material (SRM) from October 2003 .

I hope oxtails are okay! I had two bowls of oxtail stew when I was home for the holiday last week. I'll let you know if I'm not feeling so good in the near future!

[tryska]

hmm..if i'm reading the second link correctly - that's an all clear on oxtails no?

we need to ask the brit chefs on this site what the heck they were using to make beef stock when they went through their trials.

[Pan]

Since the latest mad cow disease scare hit the headlines, the calls have been coming in to the Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (news - web sites) Foundation: My loved one died of CJD, people say. Could it have been something he ate?

The news is full of concern that people can develop the brain disease by eating food products from cattle with mad cow disease. Only about 150 cases of the human disease linked to mad cow, known as "variant" CJD, have been counted worldwide since it was first formally described in 1996. (The vast majority of those cases are in the United Kingdom.) But every year, about 250 people in the United States alone are diagnosed with classic CJD, a disease known for 80 years.

Though both forms of CJD are rare and always fatal, they do differ in several ways: in the age of their victims, the speed in which they kill, and the initial symptoms.

The cause of classic CJD is unknown 85 percent of the time. The remaining cases are either caused by inheriting a genetic mutation or acquired through medical procedures that used contaminated equipment or tissues.

For the rest of the story, click here:

'Human' Mad Cow Usually Not Tied to Diet

[ExtraMSG]

While it's true that people tend to miscalculate risks greatly, I'm having a lot of trouble with the idea that BSE infectivity in the meat we have available to purchase is something that we should accept.

Someone who knows that there is risk involved in eating raw milk brie is taking a calculated risk.

A pregnant woman who consumes ice cream or queso fresco that was mixed with raw milk contaminated with Listeria in the factory; or a child who eats an e coli infected hamburger at a fast food joint; or someone who ate a salad with green onions that were contaminated with hepatitis--these people were not taking calculated risks. The food was contaminated, it should have been safe, and it killed them.

Too often the safety of the food supply in this country is based on the convenience and profit of the food industry, rather than the regs that we have in place. They cut corners because they know they probably won't get caught.

Would you really say to the mother of the boy who died from eating a Jack in the Box burger that she was expecting too much?

In general I agree with you, but it's important to remember that these things aren't usually an either/or. eg, if you ask people whether their water should be contaminated they would obviously say "no". However, our water is contaminated. All of us. Some of them are natural contaminants. Some are contaminants that we put in ourselves, such as chlorine, that would kill us in large enough amounts. Should we insist that all eggs never have samonella? What if that means eggs can never be sold because it's impossible?

The important issues are public information, risk, and contamination levels. We should insist that companies and the government make honest information available to the public so that we can assess the risks ourselves. We've become so accustomed to thinking that whatever is legal is safe or with equating safety with legality with food that we stop making choices based on our own risk assessments like we do with driving a car, skydiving, playing football, or a million other things we all do.

I love food and I'd rather make my own choices about what risks I'm willing to take rather than the government. If I want a medium-rare burger, raw-egg mousse, and sesos taco then as long as we have a free press and take companies to task for giving false information about their products, then let me choose.

Even Schlosser admits (implicitly) in Fast Food Nation that the market is more effective at making changes in food quality anyway.

[fresco]

There are areas where government has a legitimate role to play, and setting (and raising) food safety standards is one of them.

[Nick]

I was just over at Fulton's shop and we were talking about all this and talk turned to ox tails. David, Fulton's nephew who has killed and butchered a lot of cattle, thinks that ox tails can carry mad cow. He said there's a hole that runs down the spine and into the tail.

[ExtraMSG]

There are areas where government has a legitimate role to play, and setting (and raising) food safety standards is one of them.

That, of course, is an opinion. But my point is really that a) contamination-free food shouldn't necessarily be the primary goal, and b) the private sector seems to do a better job of enforcing safe food than the government when it "decides" to do so.

[Katherine]

There are areas where government has a legitimate role to play, and setting (and raising) food safety standards is one of them.

That, of course, is an opinion. But my point is really that a) contamination-free food shouldn't necessarily be the primary goal, and b) the private sector seems to do a better job of enforcing safe food than the government when it "decides" to do so.

Surely you jest.

The reason salmonella contamination in poultry is universal, e. coli in beef is expected, and BSE is starting to be found is because we have allowed the industry to base standards on the easiest and cheapest way to raise and process these, safety be damned.

In Europe they don't allow processers to chill poultry by soaking them in water contaminated with fecal material and blood. Here, the speed with which we process cattle assures that contamination is frequent, and contaminants are mixed with large lots of meat that is distributed widely.

To expensive to recall all that meat? Aw, heck! Those consumers would rather save pennies than watch their children grow up.