Mad Cow Disease

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Mad Cow Disease

Bovine spongiform encephalophathy ( BSE), which is mainly known as

mad cow disease has infected the society and has put the lives of

individuals at risk. This was very frightening to the people that ate

meat during that time. The terrified people would not even want to eat

hamburgers at MacDonald, steak at restaurant and much more. What also

alarmed the people was the fact that there was a possibility of

getting the human form of mad cow disease. This was called variant

Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD) which is through tainted blood, but

this was only a theory which was later proven wrong. Authorities in

the United Kingdom said there was an adult who died from vCJD in early

December 2003. They believed that he obtained this illness by a blood

transfusion during surgery seven and a half years earlier. His donated

blood came from what they thought was a healthy person in 1996, who

apparently died three years later from vCJD. No one really knows what

causes BSE, but what theories the scientists say might cause this

disease is a protein called a prion. This occurrence made the people

even more worried, this would also lead to business failure for the

beef industries.

Canada’s beef industry was shattered on May 20, 2003 when they found

out that a cow in northern Alberta was tested positive for mad cow

disease. Canada at the

time was the third largest exporter of beef in the world. After the

mad cow incident during the months of June July and August the values

of the Canadian exports went down to ...

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... meat and you decide to still

keep on doing so, your best way to protect your self if to know where

the animal is raised. Getting the meat from a local farmer is safer

and if you can go and visit the farm to see what is going around. Ask

questions to the farmer and keep a good eye out on knowing how the

farmer

takes his work seriously. Good questions to ask are how do you raise

your animals? Do you get them tested for mad cow disease? Are they

feed any antibiotics with their food. Are also hormones given to the

animal Questions like those. Great farmers you should look for are the

ones who don’t feed their animals with animal products but pasture

which is. Something to look out for is if your farmers name and phone

number does not appear anywhere, odd are that the meats they are

selling were not raised properly.

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