What´s Mad Cow Disease?

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Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy Commonly called ‘Mad Cow Disease’ is still a top priority for the Food and Drug Administration and the other government agencies. Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE) is a chronic, degenerative disorder affecting the central nervous system (brain and spinal cord) of cattle (FDA Consumer). BSE is very fatal for cattle. When the first case of BSE, or Mad Cow Disease was suspected in the United Kingdom 18 years ago, the US immediately halted beef imports from the UK and has never reopened them and in 1989 the US banned importing ruminant animals and at risk ruminant products to the US from countries with confirmed cases of Mad Cow Disease. These countries include the United Kingdom, France, Belgium,…show more content…
Some of the symptoms are anxiety and depression, than a wobbly gait and weakness in grip develop not to far after. Before the first few months have passed comes the memory loss, confusion, one might include Alzheimer’s disease. Mad Cow Disease is a form of a TSE or a Transmissionable Spongiform Encephalopathy. You may or may not have heard of chronic wasting disease in deer and elk, Creutzfeldt Jakob Disease in humans or scrapies in sheep, these are all examples of TSE’s. TSE’s are rare brain diseases where abnormal proteins accumulate in the brain of the infected being. Science doesn't really know what actually causes these proteins to go haywire, but this is what they believe happens in Mad Cow Disease. What happens is the prions, or abnormal proteins, build up in the central nervous system tissues of the cow, for example, the brain, spinal cord, and retinas. The abnormal proteins in the brain cells result in altered functions of the cow and the death of the central nervous system cells, which kill the cow (www.bseinfo.org). To make things more complicated the lethal dose is unknown. Sausage meat that has been processed may be the riskiest, because they are more likely to contain bits of brain and spinal cord. Researchers believe that the more beef you eat the higher risk you are at. But the type of beef you are eating is also determining the amount that you and taking in (Mad

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