Mad Cow Cheese?

Factual Questions
1

We all know about the problems with British beef…

I wonder about British cheeze. I’m partial to a particular Welsh cheddar that is sold at Trader Joe’s.

Do you think the nasty prion that causes Mad Cow Disease can be transmitted by this cheddar? If so, I will avoid it from here on out…

Too bad, it tastes excellent! But having seen about a half-dozen patients die of CJD (I’m a neurologist), I think I could dispense with the gastronomic pleasure.

I know that there has been an embargo on British beef due to Mad Cow fears. So far as I’m aware, no one has mentioned British cow-cheese. You heard it here first.

Nick Capozzoli, MD

2

No-one has shown that the prion responsible for BSE is found in milk.

The current view in Europe among scientists is that the measures taken to counteract BSE in Britain make British Beef products somewhat safer than their European counterparts where trade interests supressed serious research into the spread of the problem. Germany, France and Switzerland and now Spain are finding BSE infected cows in their herds now and are beginning to panic.

3

I belive it has to do with the bone.

AS long as there aren’t bone bits in your cheese you’re ok.

4

This has me really worried! What about jell-o? Isn’t gelatine made from rendering beef bones? This is serious-I don’t eat a lot of beef, but jello is my favorite dessert! Has anybody detected the prion in gelatine-or is the rendering process hot enough to destroy it?
Call my lawyer-I want to sue General Foods!

5

Gelatine from beef bone has been banned in Britain since the beginnining of the reaction to the scare for this very reason. It is not the bone that matters, but whether the spinal column was included in the rendering.

Virtually nothing (heat, chemicals) stops the prion that carries BSE from infecting, so rendering would not take away its infectiveness. If there is BSE infection in a countries cattle and the spinal column is used in rendering, then the infection is likely to be present in the gelatine.

6

I asked an Infectious Disease colleague about the Mad Cow-cheese connection. He said the CDC “doesn’t believe” that the CJD-like prion is present in milk products…and that “it is believed” such products are safe…

He admits that he eschews gelatin products because he is not convinced of their safety…and he was a bit startled about my concern for cheeze and milk products, which he concedes he had not previously considered as dangerous,

To the poster who feels that it is the “bones” or meat close to the bones that is problematic, that is hogwash (don’t mean to cast aspersions on hogs…they have not yet been implicated in prion diseases). That superstition derives from the opinion that prion diseases are related to CNS infection, and that meat close to the spinal column would be most affected.

Prion proteins seem to be ubiquitous in infected organisms. Human infections have resulted from consumption of any muscles, from blood transmission (by use of contaminated EEG and EMG needles, and probably acupuncture needles), from corneal and other tissue transplants, by dental procedures, etc. I am not aware of reports of sexual transmission, but I would not doubt any such reports.

I certainly hope we do not need to go strict vegetarian, but if this situation worsens, we may have to.

BTW, it is possible to sterilize surgical instruments for prions, but the “standard” sterilization techniques are inadequate. It is safer to use disposable instruments. For example, almost all EMG needles in use today are disposable. Previously they were reusable. The military has for several years banned the use of reusable single fiber EMG (SFEMG) needles, and has chosen to toss these expensive ($200-$300 apiece) needles in the trash rather than try to sterilize them. Kaiser and your local HMO’s still reuse them!

I am not aware of any dentists who throw out their expensive drill bits after a single use. Also, those gleaming and rediculously expensive surgical instruments that are laid out for every open-heart procedure are all “sterilized” and reused. I won’t even attempt to discuss the razors and other instruments used by your local barber…

Feel free to call me an alarmist paranoiac. Use your own judgment and do what you think you must do.

Thus spake Neurodoc.