Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy

What disease has already killed at least 20 people? What disease originated in sheep and was called "scrapie"? If you answered "Mad Cow" to either of these questions, you are correct!

Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (B.S.E.), more commonly known as "Mad Cow Disease", has hit very close to home for me. On May 20th, a single case of B.S.E was found in Alberta, Canada. It is believed, while results are still inconclusive, that the infected cow was born in Saskatchewan, north of my hometown.

After this case of Mad Cow was discovered, the price of Canadian beef fell 30-50%, as a result of a ban by the United States and Mexico. Mass slaughters were set to take place, in an effort to try and regain confidence in the Canadian Beef industry. Any animals that came into contact with the infected cow were slaughtered as a precaution. As time went on, however, it became apparent that no other infected animals could be found.

What is Mad Cow Disease? It all started in sheep in Britain, several centuries ago, were it was relatively ignored. Experts now recognize that B.S.E. breaks through otherwise impenetrable biochemical barriers, with much ease. These biochemical barriers are supposed to eliminate the spread of disease from species-to-species.

It is also difficult to detect, because after becoming infected, there is often a long period of time before any signs of the disease are recognizable. Humans that eat infected beef or other animal parts that are susceptible to the illness may develop Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD).

To this day, no one is really sure what causes BSE. Most people agree that Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy, and all other Transmissable Spongiform Encephalopathey diseases, are caused by "prions", a new type of infection. There is, however, a large group of people that argue with this theory, because it challenges a key assumption in modern biology. There is a huge percentage of the scientific community that believes that in order for any being to reproduce, it must contain nucleic acid. You guessed it, prions do not contain any nucleic acid! So scientists are still trying to figure out how the disease manifests itself.

Another aspect of Mad Cow disease that continuously puzzles scientists is treatment to end it. Normally, antibodies are produced inside your body to try and fight off the disease (such as with AIDS), but no one has ever found a cow that produces an antibody to the disease. Researchers have tried numerous treatments, but none of the animals have responded, making the disease even more perplexing.

Typically, when a case of Mad Cow disease is found, beef bans that prohibit the exportation of the country's cattle are put in place for seven years. A panel of international experts have visited Canada after the Mad Cow scare, and have said they are impressed with the fullness and thoroughness of the investigation. If Canada complies with the recommendations of the panel, the beef bans may be lifted very soon, less than two months after the discovery of the first case.

So what is Canada doing to try and prevent the spread of Mad Cow disease? On Friday, June 27th, the international panel announced that in order to keep everyone safe, all animal tissues that may contain the disease were banned from entering the food chain. While none of these tissues, which include the skull and spine, are normally parts of the human food chain, it means that these parts may not go into livestock feed. Furthermore, they suggest that a countrywide system is set up to monitor and track all the cows in the country. This would help in a number of ways, one being that if an infected cow is discovered, all the cows that have come in contact with it can easily be examined for the disease, or they may be slaughtered so that the disease has no further chance of spreading.

I feel that Ralph Klein, the premiere of Alberta says it best: "You can't tell an American cow from a Canadian cow." Still, major importers of Canadian beef, including the U.S. and Japan, are reluctant to lift the ban so early.