How to Prevent Mad Cow Disease

There is currently no cure for "mad cow disease" or its human form, variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD), so the focus must be on prevention. There are many steps you can take to reduce your risk of contracting vCJD and keeping mad cow disease from affecting cattle.

Instructions

Difficulty: Moderate

In Humans

1. Choose solid muscle cuts of meat rather than bone-in cuts. This will reduce your chance of contact with nervous tissue.
2. Avoid ground beef, sausage and hot dogs. These products are more likely to have contaminated nervous tissue ground inside.
3. Don't eat beef in countries where outbreaks have occurred in the past, such as the United Kingdom. It can take two to eight years for symptoms to develop, making it difficult to determine if the disease has been completely wiped out.
4. Avoid beef altogether. If you are still not comfortable with the risk of contracting vCJD, stick to a diet of chicken and fish instead of beef. You could also opt for a vegetarian diet.

In Cattle

5. Avoid feed with mammalian protein. This is identified as the primary way mad cow disease is spread.
6. Follow the Food and Drug Administration's ban on imports. The FDA doesn't allow feed or live animals to be imported from countries with a documented outbreak of mad cow disease or a threat of the disease.
7. Test cattle regularly for early detection. Unfortunately, there is no live animal test at this time, but testing a herd can prevent an outbreak.

Tips & Warnings

• The scientific name for mad cow disease is bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or BSE.
• Humans contracting vCJD from cattle with Mad Cow Disease is extremely rare. Humans get the disease from eating meat infected with abnormal proteins (prions) found in the nervous tissue of cattle.
• Scientists believe mad cow disease can't be transmitted through milk and milk products.
• There is no cure for either mad cow disease or vCJD. Both affect the brain and make muscle control difficult to impossible. Humans slip into a coma and die, while cattle are usually put down once the disease is identified.