: What Vegetarians Need to Know about Mad Cow Disease

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Monday, January 05, 2004 7:32 AM

What Vegetarians Need to Know about Mad Cow Disease

What Vegetarians Need to Know about Mad Cow Diseaseby David A. Kidd with Maribeth AbramsReprinted from the Vegetarian Voice, a publication of the North American Vegetarian Society (NAVS) Peter Hall of Great Britain was 20 years old when his family first realized that something was wrong. The college freshman majoring in environmental studies had always maintained a rather neat appearance, but he was starting to neglect his hair and clothes. Then, depression set in. Withdrawal from friends and family. Weight-loss . . .

Every test, from simple blood work to a CAT scan, EEG, and bone-marrow exam, showed nothing. Meanwhile, Peter's symptoms worsened. He lost coordination, short-term memory, and by the summer after what would have been the completion of his first college year, he was using a wheelchair. As Peter's family recalls, the next big blow occurred about a month later: bladder and bowel incontinence and Peter's loss of the ability to feed himself. Then came several months of dementia, and finally death in 1996 just 13 months after the very first symptoms had appeared. His autopsy revealed a brain riddled with microscopic holes, one of the indicators of the new variant of Creutzfeldt-Jacob disease (vCJD). CJD falls into the category of Transmissible Spongiform Encephalopathies, or brain-wasting diseases. As suggested by its name, TSEs are transmissible from animal to animal. And as the popular media suggests, one of the easiest ways to contract the disease is by eating the flesh of an infected animal. But while nearly a hundred other people have died of the same cause, and people all over Europe are shunning meat in an effort to ward off the brain-wasting disease, one unmentioned fact about Peter's story reveals something particularly disturbing: he had been vegetarian for at least a year before his illness struck. To fully comprehend how a vegetarian can get a disease presumed to he caused by eating infected beef, a basic understanding of TSEs is in order. Scrapie (TSE in sheep) has been rampant in Great Britain for the past hundred years. In spite of that, sheep have regularly been fed to cows for proteinÑuntil recently. Scrapie was not known to pass from sheep to cows. But in the mid 80s, just after the amount of sheep protein in cow feed jumped from one to 12 percent, cows first started being reported to have contracted a new variant of TSE. Officials called this new variant of TSE, Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE), dubbed Mad Cow disease by the media. Scientists agree that the evidence linking this new disase in cows and this new variant of CJD in people is indisputable.Of note, people have been dying of CJD for decades at a rate of one in a million all over the world. In addition, scientists speculate that the same is true for non-human animals. But there is an important difference between the rare form (referred to as sporadic CJD) and the new variant (referred to as vCJD). The main distinction between the symptoms of spontaneous CJD and vCJD is the age range in which they appear. Sporadic CJD is a disease of the elderly, with the average age of onset of symptoms occurring in the 60's. On the other hand, vCJD has an average age of symptom-onset in the 20's. That's how researchers realized that people were dying of Mad Cow disease. It was as if all of a sudden, teenagers were getting Alzheimers. CJD was basically unknown in that significantly-younger age range.

The other main difference between sporadic CJD and the new variant is the number of people potentially affected. As noted above, one of the ways that humans get vCJD is by eating infected beef. As reported in Business Week (January 29, 2001), over one million undetected BSE-infected British cattle have probably been eaten by humans and animals in Great Britain, or shipped worldwide as meat or meat by-products. Sarah Boseley, author of How the Truth was Butchered (Guardian, March 23, 1996), quoted researchers as having reported that "every adult in Great Britain has already eaten fifty meals containing BSE-infected meat, and that studies have shown that the disease can be transmitted with one dose the size of a peppercorn seed."Scientists needed to calculate possible human exposure to Mad Cow disease in Great Britain, but short of a brain biopsy or autopsy, there was no way to test for the disease. So, researchers surveyed the autopsies of people who died of other ailments. They found one positive out of 200 people, giving an estimate of one half of one percent of the population potentially incubating the disease. Scientists also tested the brains of 18 monkeys who had been fed beef fit for human consumption. The results were startling: All 18 of the monkeys had prions building up in their bodies, leading scientists to conclude that Mad Cow disease seems to have a very high dietary penetrance in primates. Now, some scientists are arguing that anywhere from 100,000 Brits to 18 million are infected with vCJD. Keep in mind that the disease is fatal. This means that if tens of thousands or millions of people are incubating the disease, then thousands or millions of people will die. The best estimate, according to Michael Greger, MD, is Oxford University's Wellcome Trust Centre for the Epidemiol ogy in Infectious Disease's projection of probably fewer than 136,000 deaths. Dr. Greger is a nationally recognized expert on spongiform diseases and was called to testify in the infamous Oprah Winfrey trial on comments about Mad Cow disease. Cattle can be infected and infectious long before showing symptoms, and that's one of the ways their meat enters the human food supply unbeknownst to people. Beef cattle do sometimes live long enough to show the disease, but it's more often seen in dairy cows as they are permitted to live longerÑabout four yearsÑbefore slaughter. However, research shows that cattle can be infectious whether or not they are showing symptoms. Actually, one symptom may be so common that it's not even viewed as a possible sign of TSE - the inability to walk. "Downers" are cattle who can't walk when arriving at the slaughterhouse. Some downer cows in the U.S. may have BSE, reported the late University of Wisconsin scientist, Dr. Richard Marsh. He maintained this warning from 1985 until his death, after discovering that several farms of mink were wiped out by brain spongiform after being fed downer cows. His warnings were ignored for a decade, but not anymore. In fact, downers are essentially the only animals tested for BSE now. The other reason that infected cattle could be slaughtered for food is minimal testing. According to the National Cattlemen's Beef Association, the U.S. has tested 12,000 cattle for BSE in the past ten years. The cattle industry points out that not a single one has ever tested positive, and they therefore argue that there has never been a case of Mad Cow disease in any cow in America. However, the U.S. only tests one out of 18,000 cows slaughtered, whereas Switzerland tests one out of every 60. Ireland tests more than twice as many cows in one night as the U.S. tests in an entire year. France has one fifth of the number of cows but they are inspecting 36,000 cows per week. If the U.S. has as high an incidence of Mad Cow disease as France, then the current USDA testing program wouldn't even detect it. Germany is testing 20,000 cattle a week, compared to our 50 a week. Germany also once confidently declared themselves BSE-free. But when they actually started looking intently, they found over 30 cases within two months. The USDA promises to try to increase its testing to 5,000 cattle per year. "This is inadequate," says Dr. Greger. "Europe has already tested a million cattle for the disease.We are only testing enough cattle to prove that we don't want to know the truth," says Howard Lyman, former cattle rancher and author of Mad Cowboy: Plain Truth from the Cattle Rancher Who Won't Eat Meat. Lyman, who was co-defendant with Oprah Winfrey in a lawsuit brought by the cattle industry over remarks about Mad Cow disease, is calling for a statistically significant number of random BSE tests to be conducted for several years in every part of the country at every stage of cattle growth. "Only immediate unbiased random tests will reveal the true health of the cattle herd in America," says Lyman. Now let's get back to the question about how vegetarians can get CJD. SO, HOW LONG HAVE YOU BEEN A VEGETARIAN? Just like cows, symptom-free humans can also be unknowingly infected with abnormal prions. If an already infected human becomes vegetarian, it l could still be years or decades before symptoms appear. That's what doctors surmise happened to Clare Tomkins of Kent, England. She was diagnosed with vCJD in 1997, but had not eaten meat in 11 years! While not necessarily conclusive, evidence points to burger consumption in her pre-vegetarian days as the cause. And unfortunately, there is no easy way to test for TSE in live humansÑor in any other live animals, for that matter. Right now, short of drilling a hole in your skull and extracting brain matter to examine microscopically (that's a brain biopsy), the only way to find out if you've got a TSE is by having an autopsy. "Convenient blood or urine tests are in the works but are probably still years away," says Salynn Boyles, medical news writer and author of Building a Better Mad Cow Test. WHEN VEGETARIAN FOOD ISN'T REALLY VEGETARIAN Gelatin contains skin, tendons, ligaments, and/or bones of cows and pigs. This thickening agent has not been named a prion-transmitting agent by the World Health Organization, but it has not been ruled out by the scientific community as an infectious agent. While vegetarians typically steer clear of gelatin-containing foods such as marshmallows and Jell-O, they don't always realize that unsuspecting items such as McDonald's low-fat yogurt and Taco Bell's sour cream also contain this form of animal protein.Fortunately, some companies are realizing that their use of gelatin is bad business. Thorne Research, for example, is now in the process of switching from a beef-derived gelatin capsule to a plant-derived, vegetarian capsule. UNSUSPECTING PUBLIC CONSUMING COW BYPRODUCTS Gelatin isn't the only animal ingredient that manufacturers seem to favor. In Mad Cow U.S.A., Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber report that humans use about 650 other biological products that come from cattle - 380 of which contain cattle proteins. For example, supplements referred to as "glandulars," are made from dried animal glands and tissues, most often derived from cows. With catchy names like Raw Pituitary, Brain Nutrition, Ultra-Male (contains testicles) and Meganephrine, glandulars have been reported in the New England Journal of Medicine as containing bovine brain, eye and pituitary glands, tissues most likely to harbor prions. While the FDA claims that supplements present no risk to Consumers, its advisory committee on glandulars has officially recommended that people who use supplements should not be allowed to donate blood. So far, this recommendation has been ignored. Other examples: The top-selling nutritional supplement for osteoarthritis joint pain contains ground cattle tracheas. During the height of the Mad Cow epidemic in the 1980's, fetal calf serum from England was used as a growth medium for many vaccinations around the world. HOW CLEAN IS CLEAN ENOUGH? Prions are so indestructible that standard hospital-quality sterilization procedures can't stop them. Even a prion-infected brain that soaked for over two years in formaldehyde was still able to infect new animals in tests. For years, humans have been contracting sporadic CJD via contaminated instruments used in medical or dental treatments. Recently, six patients at Exempla Saint Joseph Hospital in Denver were notified that they may have been exposed to CJD about six months ago through contaminated surgical instruments used for a brain biopsy on a patient later diagnosed with CJD. In New Orleans last October, another eight patients were told that they may have been similarly exposed to CJD at Tulane University Hospital and Clinic. In a related story, a U.S. dentist and two of his patients recently died from CJD, theoretically spread from contact with one of the patient's blood. "The surgical sterilization issue is a serious one," explained Dr. Greger. "The UK has already spent millions switching to disposable instruments." TRANSPLANTS AND TRANSFUSIONS AT RISK A woman went into the hospital for a cornea transplant. After her surgery was complete, it was determined that her male donor died of CJD. She contracted CJD and has since died. This occurs because prions have been found in Iymphoreticular and nervous-derived tissue, and can be transmitted if transplanted. While research has yet to answer the question as to whether or not blood transfusions can transfer infectious prions, we do know that scrapie can be transmitted through blood from sheep to sheep. The American Red Cross has recently banned blood donations from anyone who has lived in Great Britain or visited there for more than three months in the last twenty years. BONE MEAL: GROWING MORE THAN ROSES?Organic gardeners often use ground cow bones (a.k.a. bone meal) as garden fertilizer. But experts have not come to an agreement as to whether or not the inhalation of bone meal dust, which can occur during the fertilizer application process, is a possible means of TSE transmission from cows to humans. "It's all speculation at this point," says Dr. Greger. "What we do know is that non-human animals have been infected with a TSE after inhaling prions."But the question goes beyond the immediate health risks of handling bone meal. In fact, one might argue that the greater issue at hand is whether prions brought into the garden in bone meal can get on the vegetables grown there. And if so, can these prions be washed off? According to Dr. Greger, there are simply no known studies on plant contamination risk. He points out, however, that unlike some other contaminants (e.g. pesticides), prions probably do not "incorporate" into plants. "The oral dose has been found to be thousands of times less effective than the intracerebral or otherwise injected dose," he continues. "That's why brain surgery is so scary. Even a tiny inoculum of prions imbedded directly into the brain can cause a chain reaction. But if you ate that same amount it probably wouldn't hurt you." With so many potential ways to contract the disease, one might wonder why we don't hear more in the media about Mad Cow disease and its human variant coming to this country. In fact, the government and meat industry seem to be constantly reassuring citizens that the disease is definitely not here. Maybe they are right. But many researchers have concluded that at least a sporadic form of TSE is here in America, and that it may be occurring in larger numbers than scientists predicted. U.S. FOLLOWS IN GREAT BRITAIN'S FOOTSTEPS Feeding animals to animals is still permitted in the U.S. Since 1997, U.S. cows are no longer supposed to be fed to other cows. But we still permit the feeding of cows to pigs and chickens, and then pigs and chickens back to cows. Leaving aside ethical issues, the risk to humans and animals is not yet known. Despite the fact that we still feed animals to animals, the National Cattlemen's Beef Association (NCBA) maintains that there is no risk of a Mad Cow outbreak in the U.S. "The 1997 FDA feedban prohibits the feeding of mammalian derived protein supplements to cattle and other ruminants . . . It is a critical firewall measure and was implemented as an extra precaution against the BSE-infectious agent," says Chuck Schroeder, CEO of the NCBA. Schroeder adds that "If BSE ever gets into the U.S., it would not spread and could be quickly isolated and eradicated." Michael Hansen, spokesperson for the Consumers Union (a national public health watchdog and publisher of Consumer Reports), says that the "supposed firewall" described by Schroeder is nothing but a picket fence. He identified two major problems: First, the feed ban has a number of bad exemptions. For example, blood, blood products, and beef byproducts used for pharmaceuticals, health supplements, candy and cosmetics constitute major loopholes; they are not even included in the import bans. From 1982 to 1989, during the peak of the Mad Cow outbreak, Britain knowingly shipped 200,000 tons of beef worldwide - an estimated 13,000 tons of which entered the United States.Second, the rule itself has virtually no enforcement. Last fall, the General Accounting Office (GAO) released a study that looked at how well the FDA was implementing the feed rule. Over a two-year period, 9,100 firms in the feed industry were inspected. Of these, it was found that almost 20 percent were not even aware of the new feed regulation. Furthermore, 28 percent of the firms found to be handling "prohibited" material did not label their products with the required statement that the feed should not be fed to cattle or other ruminants. The GAO study also showed that of the feed firms that manufacture both prohibited and non-prohibited material, 20 percent do not have a system in place to prevent cross-contamination, even though such a system is required by the regulation. Paul Brown, Director of the National Institute of Health's Neurological Disorders Institute, also skeptical of the meat industry's claims, says that "international trade in rendered beef byproducts is virtually untraceable." He points out that from 1982 to 1989, during the peak of the Mad Cow outbreak, Britain knowingly shipped 200,000 tons of beef worldwide - an estimated 13,000 tons of which entered the United States. We already know that cases of Mad Cow disease have been found in 12 other countries, and that certainly raises the question as to whether or not it's already here. "The supposed firewall has as many holes in it as a spongiform brain . . . ," says activist Howard Lyman." . . . and I think we have unleashed an unimaginable plague on this planet."IS CJD ALREADY A U.S. EPIDEMIC? Government officials deny that there is any Mad Cow disease in the U.S., or any kind of TSE health risk, at that. As put by a FDA spokesperson requesting anonymity, "There is absolutely no health problem with Mad Cow disease in the U.S. today." Perhaps this is why we are not hearing more about cases of CJD in the U.S. New Alzheimer's research may shed a different light on this question. Currently four million Americans are diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease. The percentage of cases is on the rise with solid research showing that there are about 360,000 individuals newly diagnosed each year. At Yale University and the University of Pennsylvania at Pittsburgh, researchers recently studied the brains of people who died of Alzheimer's disease (46 in the Yale case and 54 in the Pittsburgh study). Surprisingly, the autopsies respectively showed that 13 percent and five percent of the dead were actually CJD cases misdiagnosed as Alzheimer's disease. In a third (smaller) study published in the Journal of Psychiatry and Neuroscience (1995), investigators reported that three out of 12 patients diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease were found to have had CJD when autopsied. It should be noted CJD symptoms may be remarkably similar to those of Alzheimer's disease. There are no accurate figures for the total number of U.S. Alzheimer's deaths each year, simply because it doesn't usually get reported as the cause of death. The Center for Disease Control (CDC) reported only 22,725 Alzheimer's deaths in 1998. However, a spokesperson for the National Alzheimer's Association, in a recent interview, agreed that the actual number could easily be 100,000, or even has high as 400,000 per year. Because Alzheimer's patients usually die within 8 to 10 years, she agreed that the CDC numbers must be grossly understated. If new research supports that approximately 10 percent of all Alzheimer's disease related deaths are in fact misdiagnosed CJD cases, then 10,000 to 40,000 CJD deaths will suddenly appear in America each year. That would be an epidemic. But this didn't have to happen; the U.S. government has been warned of the risks of a CJD breakout for years. One of America's most influential and visionary vegetarians, Jeremy Rifkin, founder of the DC-based Foundation for Economic Trends, in 1993 petitioned the USDA and FDA to ban feeding sheep and cattle to other ruminants. He was largely ignored at that time.Still valid, and even more timely, his petition called for:•a mandatory halt to all feeding of ruminant protein back to ruminants •an epidemiological study of the incidence of all TSE's.•an epidemiological study of TSE in downer cows.•an epidemiological study / tracking of CJD in humans. "What we are doing in the U.S. today is exactly what was shown to be disastrous in Europe," says Howard Lyman. "If we follow the same map, we will end up at the same destination." We no longer have the luxury of saying "Why should I care about a few cows dying in England?" We need to either pay attention or face what Howard Lyman says: "If you're not worried about prions, you must already be brain-dead."

by David A. Kidd with Maribeth AbramsReprinted from the Vegetarian Voice, a publication of the North American Vegetarian Society (NAVS) http://www.parkc.org/Madcow_veggies.html