It’s What’s for Dinner (Not)

Numbness sets in, followed rapidly by mood swings. As the brain’s protiens collapse into gummy gelatinous webbing, hallucinations begin, accompanied by uncontrollable tremors and muscle spasms. The final stage includes disorientation and dementia … followed by death. The entire process takes just months.

This is the progression of bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or BSE — mad cow disease. Contracted when humans eat meat contaminated with brain or neural tissue from a diseased animal, BSE may lurk undetected in the human body for ten to fifteen years.

With the advent of the first cases of BSE in America, nation after nation is turning up its nose at U.S. beef, and with good reason:

– Despite pressure to discontinue the practice, the U.S. beef industry persists in slaughtering “downers” — animals too sick to walk — and selling the meat for human consumption.

– The U.S. beef industry recycles animals, feeding live cattle the slaughterhouse scraps left over from previously processed animals. (Compare to Australia, where the cattle are exclusively grass-fed.) The result? The brains and nerve tissue of infected animals could easily work its way into the food chain.

– According to Time Magazine, the U.S. checks less than one percent of its cattle for BSE. That’s a problem … because once the meat is processed, there’s no way to test for BSE, and no amount of cooking or radiation will destroy the prions that transmit the disease to those who consume contaminated beef.

On the grounds that no case of BSE had ever been identified in America, the Cattlemen’s Association (one of the nation’s most powerful lobbies) defeated legislation that would have forced industry reform. At this point, however, with even our shoddy detection system turning up infected animals, an ugly fact comes to light: no one knows how safe our beef really is.

And somehow, reassurances of safety from an industry that has long favored profit over public health (and common decency) just don’t reassure me anymore. Meanwhile: health officials begin to muse that we may have the making of a plague on our hands.

So: no more beef for me. As much as I love a good steak or a hamburger cooked medium well, I’m convinced BSE will, in coming decades, be the AIDS of its time.

Until our government is willing to slap strict controls and heavy fines on fatcat cattlemen, I’ll do just fine with chicken, pork, and soy, thank you.