Mad Cow Not Enough to Make Me Mad

By Jason Cannon
Tuesday, March 14, 2006 10:47 PM CST
The Clanton Advertiser

Excerpt...

I'll admit it. I don't fully understand what mad cow disease is. All I really know is that once they find it in a cow, you'll hear about it for the next few weeks and expert after expert will tell you what a horrible disease it is.

Even though state agriculture and health officials Friday stressed that the infected cow posed no threat to humans or other animals, that won't stop the country's herbivores from lashing out against the practice of eating cows.

The animal was used for breeding and hadn't entered the food supply for people or animals, said Dr. Tony Frazier, state veterinarian. That means the possibility of someone eating this cow and its "diseased" meat is absolutely zero.

He added it's unclear how many offspring the cow produced and said the disease would not be transferred from mother to calf. Therefore, any calves that made it to the food chain were not likely to have the disease.

Mad cow is not a contagious disease. Rather, it spreads in cattle through feed containing meat and bone meal derived from infected cattle.

The U.S. prohibited the use of such protein supplement in cattle feed in 1997, so it's likely that the cow was infected before the ban.

Now that stricter guidelines have been put into place regarding cattle feed, with each passing day the likelihood of new mad cow cases decreases. Available data suggest that the animal was probably more than 10 years old, which indicates that it may have been born before 1997, when the USDA implemented a ban on ruminant-to-ruminant feed practices...

...Because of the way beef is processed - without brain and nervous tissue - mad cow infected beef making it to the market place is even more unlikely. The guidelines for cattle feed are just added precautions.

I have absolutely no intentions of altering my diet due to this case of mad cow. In fact, now that the weather is beginning to warm up, it makes it even more likely that I'll fire up the grill - and beef is my prime choice of grilling fodder.

Note: Jason Cannon is the managing editor for The Clanton Advertiser. His column appears each Tuesday.