Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (a.k.a. Mad Cow disease) is a disease found in various meats, but most notiably in beef.

So normally Cows are hervibores right? They normally would eat plants like wheat, grass, and hay. But due to high demands of beef, and due to the cost of wheat and hay, the beef companies often have to turn to cheaper animal feed such as chicken c**p or unneeded corpses of cows already processed.

With the nauseating (and diseased) feed, the beef ends up poisoned, and then it gets on your plate. Best not to bother with it, or had bought it in the first place.

Though statistics are little, it can still mean danger

More info here

Is this a debate? :S
The risk for BSE is really really low (at least here in the US) I doubt any meat is affected

dont u think the f.d.a. checks the meat first

What is there to debate? It exists, but doesn't go through. Don't you think a farmer would notice a cow that tries to stand up but can't?

You trying to connect mad cow with something unrelated.

Yes, beef is turning into an automated industry, and it's horrible, and yes, I do believe mad cow came from cows eating something else, but the only reason why it occurred in the US was due to a cow from Canada or something.

And potatoes can be killed by insects.
So how do you know you don't have a dead potato?
You don't.

Don't eat mashed potatoes.... for your own sake.


No offense, but BSE is really low risk, because if one cow gets it, a thousand cows get it... so its easy to notice.

Because I have had to go to schools and do talks to classes with regard to topics such as BSE, CJD, Kuru and Scrapie I was able to resist tearing my hair out after reading this topic. These diseases are caused by a proteinacious body known as a 'prion' - or protein viron. These are enzymes in effect, that have strong folding sheets that make them extremely stable. This is a bad thing, as they are hard to destroy through cooking and so on. They may even survive steralisation techniques used in hospitals to clean medical tools.

Anyway, the theory goes that when an animal eats members of its own species, it ends up creating more stable proteins from related proteins ect ect lots of science, it's late at night and I'm not getting paid for this. In the end, holes are punched through the brain and it resembles swiss cheese / a sponge. You could blame the cattle industry, but you will find that this has been a problem that has existed for a long time.

These swiss cheese brains sound tasty my friend.

And water is poisened!

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blRCh-EDuDs

Besides, Hay is cheap as hell

I eat local burgers, like In And Out here on the west coast...damn their burgers are so good lol. its crazy. No fear of MCD here!

While the comedian was poking fun at it and I agree with him... he made two mistakes 1) Americans really should learn how to pronounce words/names such as Jakob and 2) You do not get variant CJD from eating beef. You get it eating the nervous tissues which the brain and spinal cord comprise of. Burgers that are made using mechanically reclaimed meat can contain spinal and cranial tissue which can end up in the food chain. Eating a lump of rump steak is safe.

Hay doesn't make the cows grow as big.

How many people have died from BSE? 70 some. That taint a lot ("taint", get it? )

I think we'll survive this. If you want something to be scared of, go read Richard Preston's "The Hot Zone" and then take a trip to Africa.

I eat food. I've never gotten sick from it and don't plan to. If I ever get sick from food, I will be angry at the food. Then I will eat it some more as punishment.

That's my method.

I have Mad Cow disease irl.

After reading this post I was going to make a reply about people who can't stand when someone doesn't have in depth knowledge of an unimportant subject they just happen to sp.e.c.i.a.l.ise (edited due to odd filtering) in, but I couldn't be bothered.

wait...

I suppose human physiology, disease and medicine are unimportant if you happen to be backward enough to put religion and prayer before science. Doesnt take much for the uninitiated to do a little reading into a scientific topic - in this case many newspapers covered it. For this reason, of course I will be irritated when people are unable to type some key words into google to read about it.



c'est la vie

Oh man. I wonder if this would be the same for humans.

This hasn't been brought up recently though. I remember the first time I heard of it lots of people were worried. But not so much anymore.

Human versions of the disease have occurred in isolated areas of the world where people have practised cannibalism in the past. In the late 1950's a human specific version was discovered in Papua New Guinea. It was named Kuru (meaning to shake - one of the visible symptoms) also known as the 'laughing sickness' due to the infected individuals random outbursts of insane laughter and general demeanor before they went completely insane and died.

It is important to note that this is the first official documented version of this form of disease. It is hypothesised that over versions have existed in the past due to the same practise of eating human brain and spinal tissue. Due to the isolation of incidents and the times they may have occurred in, it is possible that it is more prevalent in history than we suspect.

burgers are good! dont worry about diseases. it's those that worr that always end up getting them. get over yaself