[sarasmom]

Not to burst your bubble, since I mostly agree with you, I would ask that before you blow sunshine up my nether orifices, to acknowledge the fact that cows are herbivores.
BSE and related threats to the food chain first started appearing when some idiot thought he/she could routinely feed an herbivore animal an omnivore diet, to increase profits, with no adverse reactions.
Scabies jumped from sheep to cows, and eventually mutated into BSE/Mad Cow Disease/human nvCJD because herbivores were forced fed as omnivores with meat by-products contaminated with diseased prions.
It does not matter how well you cook your meat.It will not protect you from diseased prions.
You can not clean the equipment at the slaughter house of prions by bleach, or autoclaveing, or irradiation.
It is not known how many particles of diseased prions it takes to cause nvCJD in humans, or even how many diseased prions it takes to spread BSE to cattle via contaminated food suppliments.
It is known that the entire problem would not BE a problem, if the meat industry just stopped feeding ground up cow meat to cows, and did not grind up sick cows to make cat and dog food in the same facilities they grind up sick cows to make meat by-products to feed humans.

[WackyKat]

It is known that the entire problem would not BE a problem, if the meat industry just stopped feeding ground up cow meat to cows, and did not grind up sick cows to make cat and dog food in the same facilities they grind up sick cows to make meat by-products to feed humans.

That's right; the meat industry fought more stringent procedures that were proposed after the European mad-cow outbreak on the basis that they would be costly,, and because of their political power, they prevailed.

Now that the inevitable has happened, I don't feel sorry for the greedy SOBs one little bit

[jim35]

At last, an informed post on this subject. Every word of it true, I might add. One question only: scabies? is this a misprint? Last I checked, this was a skin parasite, that often infests humans.

[Volunteer]

I agree with you that feeding cows infected feed was - to put it kindly - a very, very bad idea.
But, given that the disease is in the brain, and spinal cord of the infected animal, avoiding these pieces seems to lower my risk of contracting this to a very, very, very low number. At least it seems safer than eating green onions at a Chi-Chi's back in Nashville.

[tubebender]

It doesn't matter one whit about BSE. We were told on this forum that we were all going to be dead from SARs by New Years Day...or was it AIDs...or nuclear fallout...or Meteorites...or global warming...or was it fill in the blanks_________