What Is Human Risk?

Let me get this right: Premier Klein wants to kill a few older cows that were born before the feed ban and turn them into hamburger for public consumption. Should we believe him when he tells us this action will benefit the Canadian beef industry? Absolutely! By slaughtering those old animals now, before they have a chance to develop the obvious symptoms of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), we Canadians have a better chance of having fewer cases of BSE in cows go on the record. And fewer cases will indeed look good for our Beef industry, especially when we live next to a country whose only detected BSE case was a Canadian import cow!

So if we add up the Canadian cases, we get four confirmed (let's politely assume all farmers would be honest and report any suspicious cows--wait, wasn't there that meat packing plant back east that got closed for processing animal carcasses illegally?). And there is usually some scientific calculation factored in to account for the cases we accidentally miss, eat, and turn into feed. What this means is, given that the incubation period of BSE in cows is around 8 years and the feed ban took place in 1997 with no recall on feed still in use, and given that recently Health Canada secretly tested supposedly animal protein-free feed intended for cows and found over half to contain animal protein, and given that the BSE cow back in 1993 was ground up and put into feed (oops) and, as documented by Health Canada, fed accidentally to cows on several Canadian feedlots (another oops), we can be CERTAIN there will be more cases of BSE.

The question remains, however, by turning those old cows into meat for human consumption, will we see cases of human BSE in another 10 years or so, after we have had enough time to incubate this disease? Well, you might say, gee, the Brits ate tens of thousands of infected cows, and only 156 people died of BSE. So what are the odds? This is the problem--scientists do not know the odds, because not all of the Britons who ate infected cows have symptoms yet, as the incubation period is suspected to be up to 40 years! And random tests on British tonsillectomy patients show that some symptom-free people are harboring the infective agents known as prions in their tissues. Some scientists have noted that all human BSE cases occurred only in one group of the three possible groups of people with a specific marker in their blood, and there is concern that infected people in those other two groups are just incubating BSE for a longer period. And still other scientists are looking at possible links between Alzheimer's and variant BSE.

Now I ask Mr. Ralph Klein, is he so certain there is no human risk that he is willing to serve up those hamburgers without any concern? Or should we listen to Health Canada, which deems hamburger and processed beef to be riskiest, and choose safer cuts like steaks and, my favorite, roasts? Anybody have the answers? (P.S., we're planning on beef this weekend, so please let me know if this is a bad idea).

KPC