Jefferson Review

"Your Liberty is Our Interest"

Home /  Archives / Search / Links / Quotes / Book Reviews / Advertise /Contact us / Subscribe / Calendar

Mad Cow Mania

By George Baumler

  Beware you carnivorous connoisseurs of grilled beef flesh -- you'll catch the "mad cow" disease!  At least that's what the control-your-life crowd would have us believe.  It doesn't take much digging to find out that "mad cow disease"(bovine spongiform encephalopathy BSE) (in humans Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease CJD) is not nearly as big a threat as Hepatitis A.  However, it should be noted that eating meat and animal products is not politically correct, and therefore any small risk associated with the practice can justifiably be blown out of proportion.  Let's put some proportion back in the equation, while my T-bone gets flash burned on each side. 

  The CJD-BSE link has been tracked in the UK since 1986, and over 140 people have contracted the disease and died as a result.  That sounds terrible, doesn't it?  Certainly if you or a loved one were the deceased, but what about the rest of the folks who ate parts of the same cow?  You can be sure that even the hungriest trencherman couldn't eat an entire beef carcass alone.  If you figure that the animals dressed out at 500 pounds and were cut into steaks, hamburgers, roasts etc., even at one pound per serving (my T-bone needs turning) that would mean that there should be at least 500 people infected with CJD for each infected head of cattle slaughtered.  Surely, there have been more than one head consumed since 1986.  Even a stingy Englander would go through more than one head of beef in 17 years.  By rights, there should be at least 500 infected for each diseased cow butchered.  The numbers just don't add up to the total ban beef hysteria touted by the Chicken Little crowd.

  Every year in the good ole USA, 100 people die from Hepatitis A.  One contracts this viral disease in a few different ways, some having to do with lifestyle.  The avenue of infection pertinent to our discussion is via fresh fruits and vegetables.  Oh yes, those healthy green, red, and yellow, leafy and full-of-nutrients gifts of the plant kingdom are disease vectors.  In Atlanta, Georgia, in one month alone, 250 people were infected by eating produce from salad bars in restaurants.  Tainted produce carries additional organisms such as E.coli, a strain of bacteria responsible for food poisoning and even death.  It is said that contaminated produce causes more disease than beef, pork, and poultry combined.  Now, that's healthy eating!

  I'm glad the cattle industry is taking steps to alleviate fears and insure the safety of beef products, but let's keep the food risks in perspective.  Compared to 100 years ago or to conditions in the rest of the world, our food is super safe.    Gotta go my steak is done and the salad is ready.

Weather (Louisville) / Mapquest / Search / White Pages / Business Search / CNN / Dictionary / E-card / MSN