I admit I have only a very limited understanding of Mad Cow disease. The group of diseases termed transmissible spongiform encephalopathy (TSE) is believed by most researchers to be acquired by eating a misfolded cell surface glycoprotein termed a prion. Most researchers believe this “infectious protein” is sufficient to cause disease, however, there are skeptics and I am not completely convinced a deformed variant of a normal cell structure explains the entire story.
What is clear is that Mad Cow Disease scares almost everyone in both government and the agriculture industry. The Wisconsin State Journal expresses concern about this potential problem and calls for increasingly stringent government standards.
Improve Safeguards Against Mad Cow Since 1997, the centerpiece of the government's policies to defend against mad cow disease has been regulation of what goes into cattle feed. Because mad cow disease is believed to be spread by eating infected material, the regulation focuses on banning cattle remains from cattle feed. However, the Jan. 23 confirmation of a Canadian case of mad cow disease in a 6- year-old cow, born after the current U.S. and Canadian cattle feed policies went into effect, demonstrated the importance of tightening the standards.The Editorial Board must have had a sudden flash back to the government mandated mass slaughter of British herds several years ago, and trembled at the thought of those deep pits and merciless bulldozers across the Wisconsin landscape. I wonder if the editors considered that it was the environmentalist movement that may have triggered those tragic events by altering industry practices.
Prion Proteins and Acquired Dementia By far the largest epidemic of human transmission of prion disease has its roots in the industrialization of livestock production. High protein feed supplements produced from the bone and offal of sheep, pigs, chickens, and cattle have been in widespread use since the 1950s. Collectively called meat and bone meal (MBM), the supplements were first rendered (heated) and extracted with hydrocarbon solvents to recover the valuable animal fats. Although not understood at the time, these steps probably helped to denature any prions in the rendered MBM and eliminated its ability to transmit disease. The initiation of this epidemic, widely known as the bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) crisis or mad cow disease, came when environmental groups in Britain successfully pressured the feed industry to abandon hydrocarbon solvent processing of MBM in the early 1980s.I’m not saying that government should not have guidelines to regulate free markets, but it is important to keep in mind that even policies of "good intention" can distort markets into unintended consequences.
