What shoppers need to know about mad cow A guide to buying and eating beef By CAROL NESS and KIM SEVERSON San Francisco Chronicle The discovery of the first U.S. case of mad cow disease, in an animal slaughtered in Washington state, is bound to raise questions in any beefeater standing in front of the meat case or butcher's counter, trying to decide what to have for dinner. Here, we answer a few of them: Q: Should I be worried about eating beef? A: The issue is really one of how much risk you are willing to take. For some people, rare hamburgers are worth the risk of E. coli. Others avoid E. coli altogether by not eating ground beef and cooking other beef completely. Some people don't eat beef at all to avoid heart disease. In other words, it's an individual decision. That being said, almost every expert interviewed on this subject agrees that the risk of contracting variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob, the fatal disease associated with mad cow, is extremely small. However, as New York University professor and food safety advocate Marion Nestle says, "It's not so small if you happen to be the unlucky one." Here are some numbers to consider when you decide how much risk you want to take. So far, 153 cases of variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob have been reported worldwide. No cases related to eating beef have been recorded in the United States. The discovery of one infected cow has prompted the recall of about 10, 000 pounds of beef, or 1 percent of that week's total beef production. However, that doesn't mean the disease doesn't exist in the beef supply. Only 20,000 out of 35 million cattle slaughtered each year are tested for mad cow disease. The tests are all done after slaughter. There is no test for live cattle. Q: Does cooking make the meat safe from mad cow disease? A: No. The misshapen protein called a prion that causes the disease can't be eliminated by heat, freezing or irradiation. Q: What's the safest kind of beef to eat? A: Cattle contract mad cow disease by eating feed made from beef byproducts infected with bovine spongiform encephalopathy. It's important to know where the animal comes from and what it's been eating. Beef from small producers who feed their animals vegetarian grain or natural grasses and beef that carries the federal organic label pose the least risk. Small ranchers either raise their own calves or buy from other small ranchers and know what the cattle have been raised on. Also, beef labeled "grass-fed" means the animals have never eaten potentially dangerous feed. The key is what the industry calls "source verification" -- knowing the history of the animal from birth to slaughter. It pays to ask your butcher if he or she can trace the origins of the meat you're buying. Q: When it comes to garden-variety supermarket beef, are some cuts less risky than others? A: Yes. There is no doubt that the cattle's spinal column and brain carry the highest concentration of prions. Some experts also believe that any meat that might come in contact with the spinal cord or brain matter should be avoided, including beef cheeks, tongue and other head meat. Bone marrow also should be avoided. Q: What about steaks? A: There is a debate about whether muscle meat is a risk. The U.S. Department of Agriculture and the meat industry say muscle meat such as steaks and roasts are perfectly safe, but no tests have been done to prove that statement. Research by UC San Francisco scientists on the forefront of the mad cow issue have shown that the prions can appear in muscle meat of lab animals. However, these tests have not been performed on cattle. Still, UCSF scientists working with Dr. Stanley Prusiner, who won a Nobel Prize for his work on prions, say that accumulations in cuts like steak or brisket would be much lower than in central nervous system tissue. Q: What about ground beef? A: The safest hamburger is meat you grind yourself from a single muscle like chuck roast. (Use the on-off pulse of a food processor fitted with the steel blade.) Ask your butcher or meat market manager if the beef is ground from whole muscle meat from a good source. Prepackaged ground meat can come from a variety of animals and often contains meat scraps.. Some meat in hot dogs, sausages and ground beef, especially in frozen and processed products, comes from a process called "advanced meat recovery," in which meat is extruded from carcasses under pressure without crushing the bones. A 2002 USDA survey of advanced meat recovery plants found that the meat from three-quarters of the tested plants contained central nervous system tissue. Q: What about kosher and halal meat? A: Orthodox Jewish experts on kosher regulations say that eating beef certified by rabbis might help protect consumers against mad cow disease, though they acknowledge there's no guarantee it is safer. While traditional kosher slaughtering already uses techniques considered to be preventive, such as not using sick animals, kosher animals receive the same feed and come from the same herds as non-kosher ones. Halal beef is slaughtered in a method similar to kosher beef. Feed for halal animals may contain animal byproducts. http://www.ajc.com/health/content/health/0104/08madcowqa.html
http://www.meetyourmeat.com/ After watching this I have decided to do my part to end the cruelty by never eating another piece of meat - EVER! I proudly join the vegan ranks and I think God would approve. Peace of mind knowing that I won't ever have to worry about mad cow again. http://www.goveg.com/feat/page/chicken-gun.jpg And no more chicken too!