Can people get Mad Cow Disease?
People cannot get mad cow disease. But in rare cases they may get a human form of mad cow disease called variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD) if they eat nerve tissue (the brain and spinal cord) of cattle that were infected with mad cow disease. Variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease is a fatal condition that destroys the brain and spinal cord. There is no evidence that people can get mad cow disease from eating muscle meat—which is used for ground beef, roasts, and steaks—or from consuming milk or milk products. People who develop vCJD cannot spread the disease to other people through casual contact. As of November 2006, 200 human cases of vCJD had been reported in the world: 164 from the United Kingdom, 21 from France, 4 from Ireland, 3 from the United States, 2 from the Netherlands, and 1 each from Canada, Italy, Japan, Portugal, Saudi Arabia, and Spain. Two of the three people in the United States, two of the four people in Ireland, and the people from Canada and Japan all visited o
People cannot get mad cow disease. But in rare cases they may get a human form of mad cow disease called variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD) if they eat nerve tissue (the brain and spinal cord) of cattle that were infected with mad cow disease. Variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease is a fatal condition that destroys the brain and spinal cord. There is no evidence that people can get mad cow disease from eating muscle meat-which is used for ground beef, roasts, and steaks-or from consuming milk or milk products. People who develop vCJD cannot spread the disease to other people through casual contact. As of November 2006, 200 human cases of vCJD had been reported in the world: 164 from the United Kingdom, 21 from France, 4 from Ireland, 3 from the United States, 2 from the Netherlands, and 1 each from Canada, Italy, Japan, Portugal, Saudi Arabia, and Spain. Two of the three people in the United States, two of the four people in Ireland, and the people from Canada and Japan all visited o
People cannot get mad cow disease. However, in rare cases they may get a human form of mad cow disease called variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD) if they eat nerve tissue (the brain and spinal cord) of cattle that were infected with mad cow disease. Variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease is a fatal condition that destroys the brain and spinal cord. There is no evidence that people can get mad cow disease from eating muscle meat—which is used for ground beef, roasts, and steaks—or from consuming milk or milk products. People who develop vCJD cannot spread the disease to other people through casual contact. It is not likely that a person could get vCJD from a blood transfusion because all blood in the United States, United Kingdom, and Canada is tested before it is transfused. From 1995 through August 2004, 147 human cases of vCJD were reported in the United Kingdom, 7 in France, and 1 each in Canada, Ireland, Italy, and the United States. 1 The person from the United States and the pers
As of November 2005, 184 people worldwide are known to have become sick with the human kind of mad cow disease. It’s called variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD). It is believed that those people got vCJD from eating beef products that came from cows infected with mad cow disease. Both vCJD and mad cow disease are not contagious. This means that you (or a cow) can’t catch it from someone else the way you can catch a cold. Also, research seems to show that you can’t get mad cow disease from milk, even if the milk comes from a sick cow. In the United States, FDA and the Department of Agriculture have done many things to protect people and cows from this disease. One of the main things is not allowing most parts from cows and certain other animals to be used as part of the food that is fed to other cows. This will help protect healthy cows from getting infections from other cows that might be sick already. Also, some cow parts, such as the brain and spinal cord from cows over 30 months
Evidence shows a relationship between the cattle disease bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), or mad cow disease, and the human disease Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD). Experts believe that both mad cow disease and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease are caused by prions-normal protein molecules that become infectious when folded into abnormal shapes. These prions are transmitted to humans through the consumption of beef. Is mad cow disease in the United States? While approximately 200,000 cases of mad cow have been confirmed in the United Kingdom, no cases of mad cow have been confirmed in the US. Because the use of infected cattle tissue in cattle feed was probably responsible for the outbreak in the United Kingdom and the consumption of beef may cause the transmission of mad cow to humans, the US Food and Drug Administration instituted a ruminant feed ban in June 1997. Therefore, it is very unlikely that mad cow disease will be a food borne hazard in the United States. Symptoms of mad cow
