What causes BSE (Mad Cow Disease)?
Most scientists think that BSE is caused by a protein called a prion. For reasons that are not completely understood, the normal prion protein changes into an abnormal prion protein that is harmful. The body of a sick cow does not even know the abnormal prion is there. Without knowing it is there, the cow’s body cannot fight off the disease.
How Does A Cow Get BSE?
The parts of a cow that are not eaten by people are cooked, dried, ground into a powder, and used for many purposes, including as ingredients in animal feed. A cow gets BSE by eating feed contaminated with parts that came from another cow that was sick with BSE. The contaminated feed contains the abnormal prion, and a cow becomes infected with the abnormal prion when it eats the feed. If a cow gets BSE, it most likely ate the contaminated feed during its first year of life. Remember, if a cow becomes infected with the abnormal prion when it is one year old, it usually will not show signs of BSE until it is five years old or older.
Can People get BSE?
People can get a version of BSE called variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD). As of April 2015, over 220 people worldwide are known to have become sick with vCJD. It is thought that they got the disease from eating food made from cows sick with BSE. Most of the people who have become sick with vCJD lived in the United Kingdom. Only four lived in the U.S., and most likely, these four people became infected when they were living or traveling overseas.
How do we keep our food safe?
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is doing many things to keep the food in the U.S. safe for both people and cows. Since August 1997, the FDA has not allowed most parts from cows and certain other animals to be used to make food that is fed to cows. This protects healthy cows from getting BSE by making sure that the food they eat is not contaminated with the abnormal prion.
Web. 15 Dec. 2015.