posted 01-01-2004 08:52 PM         

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My suggestion is to feed a quality food without meal or by-products.

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posted 01-02-2004 07:34 AM         

Yes humans can get mad cow. I remember reading in the paper about the English guy who died from getting it. He ate ground beef from one of the infected cows.

posted 01-03-2004 02:55 PM         

After all very few people have died from Mad Cow disease and it seems that mad cow disease is not that well spread in developed countries at all.

I heard somewhere that their was only one cow in Canada in the last year found to have it and one in the states.

posted 01-03-2004 11:54 PM         

nern: how do you do that qoute thing?

Mad Cow is not caused by a virus or bacteria, it is caused by something called a prion. A prion is a type of protein. The prions that cause mad cow are like proteins found in people and animals, but they are mis-shaped. They enter the body and go around finding all the good proteins and turning them into mis-shaped proteins. That is what creates the holes giving the brain a spongy (sp?) look. The reason they can not be killed is that they are proteins. It is extremely hard to denature a protein and you can do it with denaturing all of the good proteins which would kill a person or animal.

These prions are normally found in the brain and nervous system. When they create bone meal they throw the brain and spinal cord in which is why it is usually spread through meal.

There is a lot that is not known about Mad Cow and the other diseases related to it. We don't know if chickens or other animals can get a similar disease. The ones we know about are:
Cows- Mad Cow or Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE)
Humans- Naturally occuring form is Creuztfeld Jakob Disease (CJD), form from eating contaminated beef is new variant Creuztfeld Jakob Disease (vCJD)
Sheep- Scrapie
Cervids (deer & elk)- Chronic Wasting Disease

Other animals may get a similar disease, but we haven't discovered them yet. So chicken meal would be safe if chicken don't get a similar disease. If they do, then it might not be.

To date in England there have been 137 confirmed or probable deaths from vCJD. Since the incubationg period can be quite long, there could be more people out there infected.

posted 01-04-2004 12:08 PM         

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Normally the canned food you get from the store comes from a warehouse, so it was probably canned way before this Mad cow disease started

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The first confirmed Mad Cow (BSE) case in England was in 1984, I believe it was actually the 131 cow to die but the first lab confirmed case. That doesn't mean that the disease wasn't around before that. That is just when it was wide spread enough to cause public attention. This website has a good timeline for the development of BSE.

Since it has been around since at least 1984, I doubt that the canned food is 20 years old and therefore it isn't necessarily safe.

Also, this is the first cow that has been found in the US, but there could have been others. Most cows are slaughtered fairly young, so they would probably be killed before they ever showed symptoms.