Portland Nutrition Examiner Gets Its Wrong--Mad Cow Disease Is Rare; Does Not Happen "Often"
We do not wish to pick on anyone.
Over the transom this morning came the work of the “Portland Nutrition Examiner,” Kendall Scott. Writing under a headline---Do you know where your meat and animal products come from?—she wrote:
“According to former cattle rancher, Howard Lyman, many cattle, animals that were never meant to eat meat, end up being fed their own kind, and this often results in Mad Cow Disease. This food-borne illness can then be passed on to humans eating meat from those animals.”
We are use words like “many” and “often.” There are many trees in the forest. People often drive through yellow lights. Those work. “Many” and “often”, however, are not words to be used when writing about Mad Cow Disease.
We write this blog knowing that Mad Cow Disease is rare and that research into all the Prion diseases is fascinating and demands our attention.
We cannot help but point out that several sites on the web that appear dedicated to Mad Cow hysteria haven’t had any new posts in months or years, including Mr. Lyman’s. As indicated below, only three cows infected with Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE) or Mad Cow Disease have been located in U.S. herds. (See blue boxes below) Since this chart was published, a 16th infected animal was found in an animal in Canada. None of these animals entered the human food chain, nor were they fed to other beasts.
Next, we look at so-called "new variant" Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (CJD), the human form of Mad Cow Disease thought to be contracted from eating contaminated beef.
The three people who've died in America from nvCJD appear to have all contracted the disease out of the country. Same story with the one death in Canada.
On a world-wide basis, outside of England and France where the original Mad Cow outbreak occurred, nvCJD is rare.
| COUNTRY | TOTAL NUMBER OF PRIMARY CASES
(NUMBER ALIVE) |
TOTAL NUMBER OF SECONDARY CASES: BLOOD TRANSFUSION
(NUMBER ALIVE) |
CUMULATIVE RESIDENCE IN UK > 6 MONTHS DURING PERIOD 1980-1996 |
| UK | 165 (4) | 3 (0) | 168 |
| France | 24 (1) | - | 1 |
| Republic of Ireland | 4 (0) | - | 2 |
| Italy | 1 (0) | - | 0 |
| USA | 3† (0) | - | 2 |
| Canada | 1 (0) | - | 1 |
| Saudi Arabia | 1 (1) | - | 0 |
| Japan | 1* (0) | - | 0 |
| Netherlands | 3 (0) | - | 0 |
| Portugal | 2 (0) | - | 0 |
| Spain | 5 (0) | - | 0 |
† the third US patient with vCJD was born and raised in Saudi Arabia and has lived permanently in the United States since late 2005. According to the US case-report, the patient was most likely infected as a child when living in Saudi Arabia.
*the case from Japan had resided in the UK for 24 days in the period 1980-1996.
Source: The National Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease Surveillance Unit (NCJDSU), University of Edinburgh. February 2009.
Our final word to Ms. Scott: "Chill."
