It was as if the most beautiful drawings of farms were
inspired by this particular farm, so wonderful, nothing had touched it but Gods
hands. The grass was always green; the house was surrounded by blue, yellow,
purple, and pink flowers. The garden was over flowing with vegetables and
fruits sprouting giving a good sign that this year was the golden year. The
cows roamed freely with in their home lands, fat and happy. But all of that
came to a quick end in December of 1984. It was three days before Christmas in
1984 when the first cow had been spotted with a strange and distracting
behavioral change on Peter Stent’s farm. (Walters 19)
The Stent’s first had brushed aside the cow’s new
personality and ignored it for a while. But soon more cows had become ill and
they acted strangely the same. Therefor
the famer had become very concerned for his cows and he figured it was time to
call his personal veterinarian Bee. Bee had no idea what was wrong he went
through many scenarios and finally came to the conclusion that it had something
to do with the cows’ brains. (Walters 20) On this farm was indeed the first
reported case of BSE in London in the year of 1984. (Walters 23)
This first breakout was the start of something scary.
Something no one was expecting; it had become a nightmare. Left and right there
were cows turning up with the symptoms signifying that they were marked by the
deadly disease. Questions bounce off everyone’s mind wondering what and where
this mad cow disease had come from, what happens to everyone and everything
after the disease hits, and how will everyone react?
Well, Bovine spongiform encephalopathy commonly known
as mad cow disease, or BSE, is where the brain decays into a spongy mass,
slowly but the results always ends with death. (Clark) There is yet a cure to be discovered. It is
caused by proteins in the brain and spinal cord, known as prions that
inexplicably change shape. (Cooper) Described by one reported, bovine
spongiform encephalopathy is a rare and unexplainable brain disease that
rapidly and severely affects the brain, has no cure and is eventually fatal. (“Man’s”) British scientist actually had suggested that
mad cow disease had come from outer space carried to Earth in a meteor shower.
(Copper) although mad cow disease is not a natural disease, it did not come
from outer space. It is not natural because cows are not “naturally” carnivores.
Said by Clark in his report “To avoid waste animal remains (including the
brains) were grounded up and added to animal feed- a mind is a terrible thing
to waste.” This is the sole reason how
the disease started. It is now thought that a flip flop event turned a regular
prion into something that changed completely, causing the cow to go crazy
somewhere in the 1970’s. But we could not see that the cow went crazy until
1984 when one cow showed physical side effects to the disease.
So now it is believed that the cattle get the mad cow
disease by eating other cow’s brains that had been grinded up and put in their
feed. And these cows that were eating the brains were healthy but does that
mean that the cows that were grounded up healthy? The answer is no. Many had
died from other diseases and then yes there were a few that died from old age,
but even that is enough to flip a prion around. Mad cow disease also occurs
spontaneously in individual cattle, but very rarely does this happen. Only one
in a million cows does this occur. (Cooper)
After one cow had gotten it, the disease had spread
like wild fires throughout England. Cows were dying everywhere you look. Going
crazy and falling ill and then dying shortly after. In January of 1993 the mad
cow disease had reached its peak. There were nearly 1,000 cases reported every
week. (Cooper) This had made everyone fearful.
The first case of mad cow disease in a human came
shortly after the first of the cows. The word had not gotten around that the
cows were coming down with something therefore the people in England were still
eating infected cows. The disease in humans later became known as CJD or mad
cows in humans. (“Tens”) About 24,000 people in the UK were carrying the deadly
brain condition, which was indeed the twice the number of people that were
estimated to carry the disease. This many carriers is significant because there
is a very high risk that this could even spread more by the disease through
blood transfusions or surgical instruments. (“Ten’s”) The Health Protection
Agency had said that one in 2000 of the adult population of Britain were
carriers of the condition.
Calculations based on BSE in humans since the outbreak
started had suggested an average incubation period is about 17 years. The total
number of cases expected is estimated to be 200 to 300 cases reported. These
estimates are much lower than many earlier and overly emotional predictions and
reflect the extremely low infectivity of prions when crossing the boundary from
one species to another. (Clark)
We can only prevent mad cow disease if we stop feeding
herbivore animals meat; especially meat that is infected with diseases and
flipped prions causing the cows to go crazy. We need to take a step back and
look at what we did and learn from this. Feeding them natural grain and grazing
them is the only way to go to my belief. I also believe that if we stick to not
feeding them animal remains anymore we can get rid of mad cow disease
completely, excluding that one in a million flipped prion. Therefore we would
have to slaughter that one cow and get rid of it immediately.
Mad cow disease first broke out in England in 1984 and
has sense killed more than 150,000 cattle and before the 1984 in England the
disease was unknown. (Clark) In my opinion the biggest, by far, effect is all
the deaths that the mad cow disease has taken from us. Not only has the cattle
industry diminished but there have been lives taken from our population as
well.
When people get CJD it is a terrible and sad
condition, because you see the people around you surly and quickly loosing it.
When it first out broke in people, we weren’t really sure what was going on at
first. For example a young man at the age of thirteen was well on his way to be
an amazing person. He had already became an Air Cadet, and was on his way to
joining the RAF after high school. But when he reached the age of 18 things
ended up going in the opposite direction quickly. His grades fell dramatically
and he became withdrawn. They later diagnosed his symptoms with depression, and
gave him antidepressants but his condition had only become worse. Sadly on May
21, of 1995, a month after this young man’s 19th birthday, he had
past away from an unknown disorder. This sad story turned out to be the very
first known human victim of mad cow disease. (Cooper)
Often the symptoms in humans for mad cow disease are;
loss of memory, loss of coordination, drunk- sounding speech, weight loss due
to the fact that they lose the ability to eat or talk, and in some cases they
suffer seizers. (“Man’s”) It is clear in all autopsy tests that humans that
have CJD have a massive loss of brain cells. Therefore that gives us a clear
image why many of the victims are considered crazy for they have lost their
brain technically. And when the brain is viewed under a microscope the brain
tissue appears to look spongy. (Copper) The average age of CJD is about 28, but
it has affected everyone young and old. In 1996 10 people had died from the
mysterious disease, but when 2001 rolled around nearly 100 people have been
killed from CDJ. Some experts say that it could eventually infect 275,000
people. Meanwhile bovine spongiform encephalopathy has slaughtered over 180,000
known to be infected. (Cooper)
Governments in Europe and North America have now
banned feeding supplements containing meat and other ruminants, such as sheep
and goats to other ruminants. But because between the infection and physical
symptoms could be 30 years, we may not know if the regulations are even
working. (Cooper) And now critics worry that it is only a matter of time before
the disease pops up again in another part of the world. The reason why they
believe this is because many other new countries do not have any regulations
and they will by feed for their cattle that has ground up remains in it only
because it is cheap. For example the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization had
come to the conclusion that cattle in more than 100 countries may have already
been exposed to the mad cow disease.
When mad cow disease had infected the people it was
different, we gave our all in saving them. But when it was the cattle that fell
ill, some tried their best to save them but they were slaughtered quickly to
attempt to stop the rapid spreading of the disease and to also stop the
suffering. According to Clark, the Secretary of Health had stated that by May
1996, BSE had affected 160,000 cattle on more than 30,000 English farms.
As more cows were infected the more the beef industry
went down as well. British beef was banned from many nations, despite the fact
that the British government attempted to keep the campaign secret. (Clark)And
now many countries have a long list or regulations that any beef coming from
another country has to go through before they buy any. Putting everyone’s beef
harder to sell and causing everyone to drop the prices until the beef industry
will come back up again. Although we still do not know if BSE is out of our
system our beef prices have rose but some are still scared and may never eat
beef again. (Cooper) People had gone as far as marking sealed packages of any
meat to assure the buyers that the meat was tested and they were 100 percent
sure that the disease had not infected this product.
After I had taken in all of this information I had
wondered how the government handled these situations, did they try to hide it
or were they open with what was going on. But when I kept digging many of the
fingers pointed to the government trying to hide.
“When a new problem arises in
society, especially a novel health issue, the response of the political
establishment is pretty much as followed: ‘The problem does not exist.’ ‘The
problem is extremely rare and, in any case, is declining. There are more
important things to worry about.’ The problem has been highly exaggerated by
irresponsible activist and popular journalists.’ There is a serious problem,
and we have been doing everything possible to deal with it from the very
beginning.’(Clark)
Clark believed that the political response was the
government lying to us and our families. In 1995 one gals’ daughter had died
from mad cow disease and the government’s response was only to tell her that
that is impossible because mad cow is not in humans and that he needs to make
that clear for everyone else to see. (Clark) Finally the lying had stopped in
March of 1996 when Dorrell, from Secretary of Health had admitted that humans
were infected with mad cow disease by eating beef products.
Although the government had attempted to cover up the
tracks left behind from the disease, they did attempt to protect the people as
well. They had attempted to regulate the beef and their feed to stop the
spread. They had also slaughtered many cows to stop the spread. (Cooper) But
sometimes that’s just not enough. Said by Gray George director of the food
safety and agriculture program, “If the government is enforcing there new
regulations and if the job is being done well- and that’s a big caveat- I believe
that we’ve minimized the chance that, if a case of BSE ever happened here, it
would end up being a major risk to human health.” (Cooper)
Have you ever wondered what it would be like if an
outbreak happened here in America? Well I have and it turns out that we have
had cases reported but we weren’t hit like England was. We kept it well
contained, but the disease had regained attention for a small handful of cattle
had been infected in the United States. Consequently, several countries have
instituted restrictions on the import of American beef. (Clark) Also there was
an outbreak in California recently last April. But the dairy cow was not an
endangerment because they had put the cow down shortly after the figured out
that she contained the disease. (New Case)
To me the mad cow disease is an important issue and we
can address it calmly and get out on top rather than fussing about making
everyone scared and hiding it is not the solution either. All we must do is not
feed herbivores meat, which only makes sense.
In conclusion if you are still terrified and not sure
that the government is not doing enough to protect the health of the people,
there are a few tips you can follow to make you and your family feel more
confident that you will not acquire mad cow disease. Number one, choose meats
that are muscle cuts because then you are staying away from the bone which
gives you less of a chance to eat the nervous tissue. Next stay away from
ground beef, hot dogs and sausages because these cuts are more likely to have
the nervous tissue in them. Thirdly, which is most obvious, do not eat any meat
that comes from any outside countries that have a past of outbreaks, because
they have all the more chance to have the disease in them than anything else.
(Prevent Mad)
Overall we still have yet to find a cure for the
horrible mad cow disease but there are many ways to prevent getting mad cow
disease. Keep your eyes peeled when shopping for meat and stay away from
foreign beef. Even better we can prevent mad cow disease entering the cattle by
not feeding them any more grounded up infected or any dead animals all
together. We must take care of the people and the cattle that are infected
instead of abandoning them. The cattle industry is very important to us as
humans and to our government. I encourage people into finding the cure. And I
trust that the government will protect us and our livestock.
Works Cited
Clark, David P. Risk
of Infection From Eating Meat. FT Press, 2010.
Cooper,
Mary H. "Mad Cow Disease: Are the government efforts to protect the U.S.
adequate?" Congressional Quarterly (2001): 161-184.
How to
Prevent Mad Cow Disease. 2012. Web. 16 Dec. 2012.
"Man's death has mad cow link." Nelson Mail, The 17 Nov. 2012:
04. Newspaper Source Plus. Web. 27 Nov. 2012.
New Case
of Mad Cow Disease Discovered. 24 April 2006. Web. 14 Dec. 2012.
"Tens of thousands in UK carry mad cow disease." New Zealand
Herald, The n.d.: Newspaper Source Plus. Web. 27 Nov. 2012.
Walters,
Mark Jerome. Six Modern Plagues. Washington DC: Island Press, 2003.
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