# Why all the concern with mad cow? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [January 27, 2004, 2:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-all-the-concern-with-mad-cow/226289 "2004-01-27T14:57:27Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 11\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![High\_Deity](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/e9a140/32.png) [@High\_Deity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/High_Deity)\ **Post date:** [January 27, 2004, 2:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-all-the-concern-with-mad-cow/226289/1 "2004-01-27T14:57:27Z")
What’s the deal with why several countries (UK, US, Canada, Japan, etc.) are so worked up about extra (and sometimes pointless) regulations to prevent mad cow disease? Why does 1 case in Canada and 1 case in the US cause so much furvor? What is the tangable benifit of reducing the chance it gets to market from 1 in a billion to 1 in a trillion \? ---
**Author:** ![GorillaMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/50afbb/32.png) [@GorillaMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GorillaMan)\ **Post date:** [January 27, 2004, 3:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-all-the-concern-with-mad-cow/226289/2 "2004-01-27T15:14:12Z")
Simple answer…the words _]Mad Cow_…if the media had nothing to call it other than nCJD, they’d be screwed…even SARS had a vaguely sinister ring to it. ---
**Author:** ![jjimm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba8739/32.png) [@jjimm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jjimm)\ **Post date:** [January 27, 2004, 3:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-all-the-concern-with-mad-cow/226289/3 "2004-01-27T15:23:05Z")
Because Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE) can occasionally be passed to humans as variant Creutzfeld-Jakob Disease (vCJD), making them die of a particularly nasty form of dementia. To make matters worse, the only way to test for BSE or vCJD is by post-mortem examination of the brain (AFAIK - this may have changed recently). To make matters worse still, it’s communicable between animals. Thus if a single case is found, there’s a likelihood that a) it has already passed to another farm, and b) that entire herd may have to be destroyed, thus destroying the livelihood of the farmer (or denting the profits of his insurer or union). ---
**Author:** ![jovan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/0ea827/32.png) [@jovan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jovan)\ **Post date:** [January 27, 2004, 3:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-all-the-concern-with-mad-cow/226289/4 "2004-01-27T15:37:46Z")
Also, BCE is most likely caused by prions. Prions are complex proteins and aren’t alive in the sense that bacteria - and to a lesser extent viruses are. Which means that you can’t kill them, of course. Which not only means that prion diseases are incurable, but that in order to rid infected material of them you pretty much have to completely destroy it. ---
**Author:** ![jovan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/0ea827/32.png) [@jovan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jovan)\ **Post date:** [January 27, 2004, 3:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-all-the-concern-with-mad-cow/226289/5 "2004-01-27T15:39:27Z")
Ah, damn, I forgot I had a good link about prions, [here it is.](http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=0009FD80-C3C6-1C5A-B882809EC588ED9F) ---
**Author:** ![spingears](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ebca7d/32.png) [@spingears](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/spingears)\ **Post date:** [January 27, 2004, 3:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-all-the-concern-with-mad-cow/226289/6 "2004-01-27T15:57:25Z")
Mad Cow disease. ``` equals ``` Chicken Little syndrome. ---
**Author:** ![jjimm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba8739/32.png) [@jjimm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jjimm)\ **Post date:** [January 27, 2004, 4:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-all-the-concern-with-mad-cow/226289/7 "2004-01-27T16:41:57Z")
> [@spingears](#): > > Chicken Little syndrome. Punning aside, yes, I acknowledge that it is incredibly rare, but it’s still [absolutely horrible](http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/3139248.stm), and [always](http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/3131375.stm) [fatal](http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/west_midlands/2979955.stm). ---
**Author:** ![ftg](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ftg/32/2801_2.png) [@ftg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ftg)\ **Post date:** [January 27, 2004, 4:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-all-the-concern-with-mad-cow/226289/8 "2004-01-27T16:53:17Z")
As has been pointed out in related threads before, the equivalent disease in sheep wipes out thousands of sheep each year. No sheep recalls, etc. But it is a big economic loss to the herders. The real logical issue is the difference of going from 0 to 1 cases vs. going from 10000 to 10001 cases. If you stop a disease at the first case, you win big. It is the same way with SARS. (Which btw would cause millions of deaths in the US alone if it ever became widespread. _It is nothing to dismiss in the least._ A couple dozen cases per hospital would overwhelm our health care system, so even people without SARS might die due to facilities being closed to them.) So, in many cases, you _have_ to stop that first case from spreading. The irrational part is foreign countries banning our exports and such. Lysteria and _e coli_ kill more Japanese from American beef each year than Mad Cow ever could. And there is a nearly 0% chance of beef exports causing it to spread to foreign herds. Only in really stupid countries, ahem, do they allow (or ignore) animal products to go into beef feed. The thing that many American farmers and ranchers don’t understand, is how they keep shooting themselves in the foot by being sloppy. ---
**Author:** ![Tapioca\_Dextrin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/3d9bf3/32.png) [@Tapioca\_Dextrin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tapioca_Dextrin)\ **Post date:** [January 27, 2004, 4:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-all-the-concern-with-mad-cow/226289/9 "2004-01-27T16:55:33Z")
> [@jjimm](#): > > Punning aside, yes, I acknowledge that it is incredibly rare. 137 [confirmed](http://www.cjd.ed.ac.uk/figures.htm) cases so far. ☹ ---
**Author:** ![tremorviolet](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/e47774/32.png) [@tremorviolet](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tremorviolet)\ **Post date:** [January 27, 2004, 5:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-all-the-concern-with-mad-cow/226289/10 "2004-01-27T17:01:11Z")
> [@High Deity](#): > > What’s the deal with why several countries (UK, US, Canada, Japan, etc.) are so worked up about extra (and sometimes pointless) regulations to prevent mad cow disease? Why does 1 case in Canada and 1 case in the US cause so much furvor? What is the tangable benifit of reducing the chance it gets to market from 1 in a billion to 1 in a trillion \? I think the average Joe gets so worked up over it because it’s so unpredictable and is a particularly nasty way to die. Plus, since it can take _years_ to take effect, ceasing to eat meat _now_ is no guarantee that you won’t get it. You coudl have it already and not know it… OK, here’s my take on it. I’m not too worried about Mad Cow disease itself. But the disease is transmitted because of some very unhygenic practices such as using downer cattle for human consumption, feeding herbivores animal protein, including fragments of brain and spinal cord tissue in ground beef. Mad Cow isn’t particulavly virulent but the next disease that comes along could be. I think it’s great that the country gets worked up over Mad Cow because hopefully it’ll force us as a country to make changes in how we process meat. A lot of Americans assume we have the stringent food safety controls in the world. This simply isn’t true; there’s a lot of “self-policing” and underinspection at our countries meat processing plants that leads to unsanitary practices. ---
**Author:** ![Moo\_the\_Magic\_Cow](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ebca7d/32.png) [@Moo\_the\_Magic\_Cow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Moo_the_Magic_Cow)\ **Post date:** [January 27, 2004, 8:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-all-the-concern-with-mad-cow/226289/11 "2004-01-27T20:29:51Z")
The tangible benefit of the restrictions is to assure buyers that everything is OK. The day the occurrence of the disease was reported, U.S. herders lost a lot of international accounts simply out of fear for the disease. The more measures introduced, the more security sellers can give to buyers.