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Page: << Prev | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 People can contract the human equivalent of the disease -- called variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease -- by eating nervous system tissue from an infected animal and possibly through blood transfusions, U.S. health officials said. So far in Britain, where the disease first surfaced in 1986, 143 people have died from the disease and 10 have died elsewhere.
"In this country, even though obviously people are concerned, they should understand we are not at risk because we do not consume brain, we do not add spinal cord to processed meats and sausages and so forth," Murphy said.
The infected U.S. cow was known as a "downer," meaning it could not stand up or move on its own.
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"Those are automatically considered a high risk-animal and therefore its brain was tested for the presence of BSE and that's how they discovered it," Murphy said. Testing is standard whenever a downer exhibits any neurological symptoms such as shaking or stumbling.
But how many "downers" are slaughtered each year is in dispute, the Times reports. The beef industry says the number is only about 60,000 among older animals, while animal rights advocates cite figures based on European herds that suggest the number is nearly 700,000.
The USDA says its best estimate comes from a 1999 beef industry survey that suggested there were 195,000 downers on ranches, feedlots and slaughterhouses that year.
More information
The U.S. Department of Agriculture (www.aphis.usda.gov) has current updates on BSE; also the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (www.fda.gov). Page: << Prev | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4
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