By Eulalee Thompson, Staff Reporter 
Go ahead, serve steak for dinner; scientists believe that the risk of contracting the human version of 'mad cow disease' is next to nothing.
BEEF IS really getting some hard knocks these days. In one corner, there are nutritionists unravelling a long list of reasons not to eat it - too much fat, it packs in the cholesterol, clogs up the heart vessels, it's not 'white meat' and so on. In the other corner, there is the degenerative disease, Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy, (BSE), attacking cattle's brain and spinal cord and potentially transmissible in the food chain.
Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy or 'mad cow disease', nearly cleaned out the British cattle industry three years ago and now it's in the news again, after an infected animal was found in the United States.
So, no tender, juicy steak for dinner? Dr. Cedric Lazarus, the Agriculture Ministry's senior veterinary scientist, believes that this drastic action against the taste buds is really unnecessary. Firstly, Jamaicans can take
great comfort in the fact that local cattle is not fed 'meat and bone meal'. Secondly, the chances of contracting variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease or vCJD, (the illness that people can develop after eating BSE-infected beef), Dr. Lazarus said, are very slim.
"It is rarely found in muscle tissues or other tissues...it is mainly a disease of the brain and spinal cord and nerves," Dr. Lazarus stressed.
Beside being confined to the brain and spinal cord of ruminants, he also indicated that international precautions were instituted, years ago, to bar the disease's entry into the food chain.
In Europe, for instance, younger animals are introduced into the food chain (the incubation period for BSE is four to five years, so it is suggested that animals under 30 months presents a much reduced risk of transmitting vCJD); slaughter houses no longer open the spinal cord or split the carcass down the middle to expose potentially BSE-infected brain and spinal cord tissues and, "meat and bone meal" protein is no longer being fed back to ruminants. This feeding practice was, in fact, banned in Britain and more recently in the United States. The ban, however, related specifically to feeding 'meat and bone meal' to ruminants; some countries still feed fish and chicken with this form of protein but Dr. Lazarus indicated that the BSE germ doesn't normally affect fish and chickens.
There are, however, some drawbacks in depriving cows of their 'meat and bone meal' as the best cows cannot live by grass alone.
"Meat and bone meal is the cheapest source of protein. It is fed to the cows not because scientists are wicked but because it provides adequate protein ration," Dr. Lazarus said.
Grass has very little protein and cows, fed with adequate protein, can produce more milk (better quality meat), which under normal functioning of the laws of supply and demand, should mean cheaper milk (and meat) to the consumer.
Various epidemiological studies in the United Kingdom suggest the 'meat and bone meal' (cattle feed) was the source of BSE. The practice was to ground up brain and spinal cord tissues of animals and then feed it back to other animals as a rich source of protein.
The disease, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO) first came to scientific attention in November 1986 when they noticed cattle with a neurological disease but there is still speculation surrounding the cause of the appearance of the causative agent of BSE. Was it some kind of spontaneous appearance in cattle, or is there some connection to scrapie, a similar disease in sheep?
The causative agent is, however, proving to be quite sturdy and stable and able to resist freezing, drying and heating at normal cooking temperatures. It stands up even to the temperatures of pasteurisation and sterilisation.
When people develop the vCJD after eating infected meat, this neurological disorder destroys the brain's cerebellum and cerebrum triggering symptoms such as nervousness, memory loss, loss of appetite, dementia, lack of co-ordination and pain.
