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Can a Cattleman Survive in a Mad Cow World?

By

 Nina M. Sipes

Sure.  All it takes is the desire to formulate a plan for surviving in the current marketplace, a bit of research on the current status of the disease, how the disease relates to humans, and the awareness that the reality of a disease isn't necessarily reflected by the amount of fear in the public's mind.  To give the media their due, public anxiety sells papers, ads, and excitement and the film clip showing that staggering cow suffering from Mad Cow disease paints a very colorful picture in the minds of consumers.  However, without the resulting pubic fear that generated government concern, and the sacrifice of thousands of British cattle, this disease would have been much worse.  Let's examine the facts as presently known.

There is a type of disease that isn't made by the normal kind of agents we usually consider as disease spreaders-virus and bacteria.  They are the misbehaving prions.  A prion (pronounced pree-on) is a protein.  A disease causing prion's appearance under scientific examination looks folded or sometimes conical.  Since a prion is a protein, genetics play a large role in who or what becomes a victim.

The misbehaving of certain prions cause Transmissible Spongiform Encephalopathy (TSE) which effects the nervous system and brain.  In very loose terms the affects resemble Alzheimers and like Alzheimers must wait until the autopsy stage for exact confirmation.  TSE's are the cause of such diseases as Scrapie in Sheep, Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE or Mad Cow) in cattle, Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease in humans, and there is even one that affects mink.

The biggest problem for researchers and the fearful public is that it takes years for prion diseases to become noticeable-13 to 40 years in humans, 3 to 8 years in cattle, and several months in mink.

          Unlike the bacterial or viral diseases that we are used to, prion diseases are not very contagious.  The Mad Cow scare came when beef in Britain began developing symptoms of Scrapie, a sheep TSE, when fed protein byproducts from sheep.  The prions in the intestinal tract nerves as well as the large nerve areas of the spinal cord and brains of some of the cattle were affected-but not the red meat areas.

According to intensive studies in Britain, as soon as their beef industry scientists figured out what was wrong and the beef were stopped being fed the byproducts of other animals, the incidents of Mad Cow in the beef industry would disappear on its own.  However, that wasn't good enough for the British people or their government.  They formed SEAC or the Spongiform Encephalopathy Advisory Committee to oversee animal and public safety on this issue.  Their findings and rulings may be found on-line at www.seac.gov.uk and at www.defra.gov.uk   The disease is in such tight scrutiny that under current debate is how much tonsil tissue is allowable to be left on a beef tongue for human consumption.

Since the study of BSE has been ongoing since 1990, it would be reasonable to think that the only Mad Cows left in Britain are the ones they keep infecting for study.  Almost true.  In Britain, all cattle that die, whether entering the food chain or not, are tested and findings of BSE are dwindling.  Not true, however of European cattle.  There are still moderately significant numbers of cases of BSE being found during random sampling of cattle in the Economic Union countries of Europe.  Those countries did not feel the overwhelming need to kill, confine, and eradicate the disease in cattle, however they are supposedly adhering to strict slaughtering requirements that do not allow for possible prion diseased portions of animals to become food for other animals or humans. 

The recent finding of a BSE infected cow in a Canadian herd increases concern in the U.S.  Questions arise.  Is this animal the result of an imported frozen embryo?  Frozen sperm?  The current results are that Canada is considering the same safety measures as Britain to retain confidence in their meat supply.  See more on-line: www.defra.gov.uk/snimalh/bse/public-health/level-3-srms.html   These safety measures are called Specified Risk Material Controls.  Certain members of the Center for Disease Control (CDC) in Atlanta would like to see similar controls enacted in the U.S. as a prudent measure.

A different opinion expressed a couple of years ago in Canada's Calgary Herald cast serious doubts about whether BSE is an animal disease.  It states that the same prion folding and disease effects can be duplicated by exposure to organophosphate pesticides.  I don't doubt that prions can misbehave due to exposure to organophosphates, but since reading the research ongoing in Britain’s study, I do believe the results of the British studies.  Regardless of how it happened, now that we’ve had a Canadian import cause concern on this side of the border we no longer have the luxury of waiting for our consumers or exporter contacts to educate themselves.  Here's some serious information for educating ourselves before we start on our consumers:

          Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (CJD) is a human TSE that may be transmitted from parent to child.  The causal factor here is a DNA glitch that eventually asks the prions to misbehave.  Since the cause is found in the DNA, it is transmitted in families, but not all family members get it.  Just like in any family you can find different colors of eyes, not all family members of CJD families get the full degree of the disease or even any of the outward symptoms.  According to the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke's website www.ninds.nih.gov, about 5 to 10 percent of the CJD cases in the United States are hereditary.

CJD can be also be developed by spontaneous mutation-somewhat like being struck with unlucky lightning.  This form, Sporadic CJD, the most common in the United States, is responsible for 85% of the cases.  In any given year, one person in every one million people per year worldwide will be affected.  That means about 200 people every year in the United States develop the sporadic form of the disease.  Those 200 people may or may not be beefeaters-their condition has nothing to do with beef.

The third way to get this unlucky is to get the disease by being exposed to CJD laden human tissue of a nervous system or brain containing misbehaving CJD prions.  Presently, less than 1% of cases in the U.S. are Acquired CJD.

When a human gets the symptoms of CJD through eating BSE beef, the acquired disease has a special designation all its own called vCJD.  There is one known suspected case in the United States.  This person lives in Florida and was a native of Britain and known to have lived there during the period of time when the beef of Britain had a BSE problem.

Since the beginning of the early 1980's, when the disease was discovered, until 2/28/03 there have been 122 lives lost in to vCJD, the human variant of CJD that is believed to have come from eating BSE contaminated beef.

More information with better detail can be found at www.ninds.nih.gov/health.  Be sure and look specifically for the Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease fact sheet.  CJD is mentioned in such depth in this article to make the reader very aware that it is called by a similar distinction to vCJD and yet it is not linked to eating beef in any way.

An additional fascinating fact about prion diseases are that they cannot be destroyed by regular food preparation or preserving means.  Not by cooking, smoking, pickling, or any of the other ways I could think to ask the experts.  On a hopeful note, since prions are subject to gene control, an animal's or person's genes plays a large role in how or if a prion will begin misbehaving.  The British have an educated guess that only 40% of their population would be affected if they all ate prion diseased beef regularly.

However, this inability for prions to be destroyed by regular methods means possible human sporadic CJD contamination by way of surgical or dental instruments that previously have been adequately cleaned by heat and pressure.  Currently, if the medical field wants to be sure of destroying all possible prion disease contamination, they shall need to use disruptive agents such as sodium hydroxide or straight bleach as well as their normal virus and bacteria killing methods.

As you can see the numbers of people that are currently affected by any form of TSE are extremely small.  The chances of being killed or injured in a traffic accident are much higher.  This fact does not lessen the concern in the mind of the general public.  Nor the fact that the British cattleman has sacrificed so much to contain this disease.  Use this opportunity to work with public concern, not against it.

Show the responsiveness of the beef industry (yourself in particular) to the real questions the public thinks we should be concerned about, 'How can we as cattlemen help continue to ensure a safe meat supply?' and 'How can we reassure the public about their meat safety?' as well as our own question of, 'How can we economically survive to guarantee our continued presence in the world as suppliers of safe meat?'

Think like a consumer.  How much would you pay to KNOW where your beef comes from?  How much would your school district pay for that peace of mind?  Think of a steak-house owner.  How much would he pay for the peace of mine to know that he is serving to his customers beef that has records-a pedigree of information to make him feel secure?

If U.S. cattlemen can show the public that they are at the leading edge of taking the consumer's concerns to heart, then those who eat beef, either in this country or our export countries, will remain faithful consumers.  Cattlemen can demonstrate their commitment and dedication to the public needs by using the information that every quality U.S. cattle breeder already has even if it is in his head or on worn pocket notebooks shoved in a drawer.

So, why not use this information and display it in a way to keep your business afloat?  A simple computer printout can do the job.  I predict a reasonable profit can be made by the first wave of U.S. cattlemen to use their records to prove where their animals came from (breeding records), what medications and immunizations were administered and when, and purchase/sales records for each individual head of cattle.

Armed with this information printout, the savvy cattleman can command a premium price for his animals and should be demanding it or at the very least informing his auctioneer of the premium information and asking it be announced as a perk at the sale.  Cattlemen aren't the only portion of the industry at the mercy of a skittish public, so are beef feeders, packers and exporters.  They will pay for the effort to assure them they are in a provable quality beef chain.

Several computer software programs have been developed for keeping cattle herd records, but I know of only one that makes the job relatively painless-Cowboy PC.

For information regarding this article contact Nina Sipes at epic@pld.com or phone 620.493.4700

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