Lowcarbezine!

Mad Cow: Should You Be Worried?

The predictable and predicted event has finally occurred: A case of mad cow disease has been identified in the United States. Since the vast majority of low carbers are regular carnivores, it's an issue that concerns us perhaps even more than it does the general population. Just how worried should you be?

There's no question that mad cow, aka Bovine Spongiform Encephelopathy, is a horrendous disease, and not only is there no cure, there is none currently on the horizon. You get it and you die, and die horribly.

On the other hand, only one sick cow has been identified so far in the USA. This doesn't rule out the possibility that there are others, but there is not, so far as anyone can tell, anything even resembling an epidemic of mad cow disease in the United States.

More encouraging is the fact that even if a cow is infected, and that cow is slaughtered for food, most of the meat from that animal will be unaffected. The prion that causes mad cow disease infects neural (nerve) tissue, not muscle tissue. You have to actually consume neural tissue to become infected. Chucks, rib eyes, and sirloins are not likely to be a problem.

So where does the risk lie?

Obviously, if you eat the old delicacy of poached calves' brains with scrambled eggs, you're playing fast and loose. But I suspect it's a rare Lowcarbezine! reader who is eating brains deliberately.

A more realistic source of bovine neural tissue in the American diet is cheap ground beef. When a cow is slaughtered and butchered, the mostly stripped skeleton is put through machinery designed to "recover" every last scrap of meat, and those scraps are generally used for cheap hamburgers. The problem? The recovery machinery can sometimes break the spinal cord open, contaminating the hamburger with neural tissue. Assuming a healthy cow, this is no big deal. Assuming, however, a cow that carries the mad cow prion, we now have a serious problem.

If you're worried about mad cow, it therefore makes sense to quit eating cheap hamburger. This would include both most fast food burgers (although MacDonald's claims to only buy beef from cattle that have been tested) and cheap, pre-packaged grocery store hamburger. For good measure, you might also avoid cheap pre-formed frozen hamburger patties, and those sold in your really scary eateries, like, say, public school cafeterias.

This doesn't mean you have to quit eating ground beef altogether, of course. Ground chuck, ground round, or ground sirloin that have actually been ground in your grocery store should be safe, since they contain only the cuts of meat specified on the label. You could even buy a chuck or round roast and have the nice meat guys grind it to order. People don't make nearly enough use of the nice meat guys, who are generally helpful and knowledgeable (at least hereabouts) and have never once charged me for service, though I'm not promising it couldn't happen.

For that matter, grinding meat in a standard-size food processor is a snap - cut the meat in chunks, removing any gristle or sinew. Throw it in the processor with the S-blade in place, and pulse the thing until your meat is the texture you'd like. You can even grind in a little onion, garlic, or other seasoning in the process.

If you can afford it, another possibility is to buy only grass-fed, organically raised meat. The mad cow problem has only arisen because of the meat industry practice of feeding ground up animals, animal blood, and even animal waste, to cattle - who are, of course, herbivores by nature. Therefore, cattle that is raised outside the Big Meat Industry, and fed only on grass and the like, should be perfectly safe.

It's also a good idea to be careful about beef-based luncheon meats and sausages. Read the labels carefully, to avoid anything that might be tainted with neural tissue. In particular, be wary of "mechanically separated" meat. "You get what you pay for" is a pretty good rule of thumb - anything really cheap made of bits that are ground up and stuck back together probably contains things you don't want to think about, even if you're not working on avoiding mad cow disease.

Avoiding mad cow is the name of the game, by the way. Unlike germs that cause food poisoning, like salmonella and e. coli, the mad cow prion is not destroyed even by prolonged cooking.

Of course, there's nothing about a low carb diet that requires you to eat beef at all. You can low carb quite nicely on pork and lamb, poultry and fish, eggs, and cheese. You could even throw in the occasional rabbit or duck, both available through most large grocery stores. Still, most of us really like a good steak. It's good to know that most steaks are safe, although T-bones, being cut from right along the spine, often contain a little bit of spinal cord in the bone. Don't eat it! Personally, I'd rather have a rib-eye anyway. But if you're really leery of the whole thing, no one could fault you for skipping beef altogether.

Still, risk analysis is an important part of life, and it's good to know that fewer than 150 cases of mad cow in humans have been identified world wide. Your risk of heart disease, diabetes, and the other diseases of carbohydrate intolerance are infinitely greater than your risk of mad cow disease. Furthermore, your chances of dying of some other sort of food contamination, like the previously mentioned e. coli or salmonella, are far greater than your risk of mad cow. A deep breath and some level-headed looks at the options are a good idea. Panic is uncalled for.

One more thing: I have generally kept politics out of this journal, and indeed, out of all of my work, with the exception of food politics. This is one of those exceptions. It is important that Lowcarbezine! readers be aware of the truly scandalous state of US meat inspections, and the fact that the USDA is, at the moment, no more than a toothless paper tiger. The cattle ranching industry has fought USDA oversight with every weapon they could bring to bear, resulting in a "regulatory body" that has virtually no power to regulate, and "inspectors" who do almost no inspecting. A perfect example is the fact that only since the discovery of a case of mad cow in the United States has the USDA finally banned the sale of "downer cattle" - cattle who are ill or injured enough to be unable to stand - for meat. Obviously, a steer with a broken leg is an okay source of meat, but one that is sick enough to be unable to rise? It makes my skin crawl just to think about it.

Personally, I would be willing to pay a bit more for my beef (and for that matter, for all of my meat) to ensure that it was safe. If you feel the same, write, call or email your Senators and Representatives, and tell them that you want tough new regulations of the meat industry, and you want them now.

Posted by HoldTheToast at January 10, 2004 07:53 PM