Hi Saturn and Thread, RE: "I would definitely stay away from hamburgers and hot dogs. "
No, these actually should be statistically safe for an individual. They had pulled the brains out of this meet. The muscle meat may have went forward, but that's apparently not a contaminant.
The statistical chance of getting MCD (mad cow disease) is epsilon, nearly zero. The risk of getting killed tomorrow when you get in your car is many many magnitudes higher than getting MCD from meat.
A key determinant in assessing risk is the incubation years.
If the incubation period is only 7 years, then Britain has already shown only about 156 die over an 18 year period. You have a higher chance of dying from a heart attack, cancer, internal bleeding from car accidents, flu, stress, than MCD.
But if the incubation period is 30 years, then that would introduce valid concern and would create a higher death risk to those who are say under 55 years old (assuming median life is 85). But by then, we could have a cure. Signapore is acting as if the incubation period is only 6 years.
But the real people who are at risk due to this MCD situation are going to be:
- pregnant mothers who unsafely avoid meet and do not get sufficient iron (notice how vegetarian-eating Indian women have an extremely high miscarriage rate in the USA)
- unborn babies, particularly in the first trimester when the brain is developing
- ranchers or farmers who will experience more stress-related heart conditions. I have a book somewhere in my library that shows a correlation between an increase in heart attacks at the hospital nearby the NYSE and large drops in the stock exchange. The biggest stress on the system will be the financial stress and the slaughter of cattle.
I do not know of anyone who will not be eating beef due to this, (other than maybe one person from SI who said they may wait a couple of days until they track down all the transportation of the meat). Am curious how expensive MCD testing is annually. Somehow its hard to believe it would cost more than $3B per year, which could mean Congress may have errored on the side of not requiring the testing of all meat. Not sure how reliable the tests are though in the first place, since an animal can have this disease for an unknown period of time, without being detected by tests. But again, Britain's numbers show how small the risk is to humans: about 156 deaths so far.
The scientist contacts that I have, which include folks in the medical community, are not changing their menus tomorrow and will be eating meat. They have the advantage of knowing that the statistical chance of getting this is so incredibly small.
If one is worried, maybe eat organic meat, because possibly the cows feed and living conditions may be handled better, the former apparently may be related to a condition leading to the disease. But who knows how good the organic ranchers are with tracking their animcals relative to the non-organic ranchers.
The negative impact of not eating meet (iron) for women is higher than eating meet (mcd).
Regards,
Amy J |
