Mad cow?
 

I have a heifer on the barter board. and someone said you can't butcher a cow older then 2 years because of mad cow. What? i have never heard of this. My heifer doesn't have mad cow. we don't eat brain or spinal cord just in case. but arn't most cows at the meat butchers older then 2 years old. Or am i way out of touch. Thanks, Vickie

You can still butcher them. Not for sure if its 24 or 30 months at which the spinal column has to be removed, you end up with new York strips? instead of t bones. You might check with your butcher ahead of time about this, these animals have to be processed separate from the rest. Basically after the younger animals so there is no cross contamination from older to younger. This is how I understood things from my butcher.

thanks
 

Thanks, i was confused. Vickie

The cow that I am having butchered on Nov 4th will be 30 months old. At the 30 month point they consider that the cow can have mad cow even if it doesn't. Also the butcher said that no matter how old the cow is if he/she has 4 permanent teeth then it will also have its backbone removed.

Keep in mind that mad cow is rare in the States. A cow has to consume the infected meat and/or bone meal from bovine. In the States it has been illegal to feed bovine meat and bone meal back to cattle. However, they are allowed to feed meat and bone meal made from porcine which will not cause BSE (mad cow). You can butcher a cow or steer at any age. However, it is usually based on weight, not age. When cattle are in feedlots, they are fed all they can or will eat. When they level out, they go to slaughter. Usually that will be somewhere around 30 pounds of feed per day per head. Also, it is usually in the 1100 to 1200 +/- pounds.

I only raise grass fed beef, so it does take longer to reach the optimum slaughter weight.

Thanks
 

Our heifer is only grass feed/Hay. i will butcher her if no one wants her. she is 1600 pounds 3 years old. I was hoping not to have to butcher her, she has become a pet. But the statment about mad cow had me questioning what a knew. Thanks, Vickie

In many areas, it is more difficult to have an animal that is 30 months or older because the custom processor is required to have a separate facility to do the older animals and they have to keep the offal separate from the others. I think our semi-local guy is in the process of putting in his separate line w/incinerator to be able to restart doing the 30 monthers and above. Far as I know, he is the only one anywhere close to us that is going to do that. :( We like his work, and he vacuum packs too.

butchering
 

All butchering we do our selves. So no worries about that. I just don't want to do her in. If we have to I will call a good friend to do the deed. after that we can do it. Thanks everyone. Vickie

You can butcher a cow 20 years old if you want, (not that it would be great meat) If you feed your cattle bought feed that could have meat scraps in it , that is possable to contract mad cow. If you only feed your cows home raised feed don`t worry about it. thanks Marc

Thanks again
 

Thanks everyone. we do only feed cracked corn and hay so we are ok. Vickie

Don't particularly want to open the mad cow disease debate again, but will point out meat and bone meal fed to cows is only a leading theory. Not absolutely proven. Look at it this way, M&BM was fed to cattle for likely longer than 100 years (including like scrappie sheep) with no problem. Something else likely triggered the outbreak in the UK.

Far as I know, to date, there have been four cases of MCD in the U.S. Two from imported cows and two home-grown. On those two it was a different strain. Some thinking is MCD is spontaneous (just as CJD is in humans). Something just triggered it in England and a couple of cases in other countries. Could the humans exposed to MCD-tainted beef have been programmed to acquire CJD later in life and the exposure merely triggered it early?

There has been only one reported MCD-related (vCJD) death in the U.S. and that was someone who had lived in England during their exposure period.

As I recall a somewhat similar health issue has been found in people who eat squirrel brains.

Talk to a veteran cow farmer and they will likely admit MCD has likely been in the U.S. in the past. It was just considered something else - like staggers - or they just found a dead animal somewhere.

To me the MCD scare was too much ado about too little. Sort of like TV's 'disease of the month'.

I absolutely agree.

The government will use anything to gain more control over our lives (swine flu?), and this was a perfect "scare" to gain a whole lot more control over farmers and slaughterhouses, all in the interest of "protecting the public" of course. :rolleyes:

"You can't butcher a cow older than 2 years". This makes me laugh. Were does this person think all the old milk cows go? Unless they raise their own beef I think they would be surprised how many times they have actually eaten beef from an older animal. Heather

Yep, they go into the supermarket and find cuts of meat offered at a sales price - chances are they came off an older cow. Since most cattle producers don't even get a calf until a cow is at least two years old you are talking about their culled breeding stock.

Thats what i thought.
 

I alway thought the older or low production cows went to the market. Thanks Vickie

Mad cow is like AIDS. It likely didn't exist very many years ago, until a mutation caused it. Scapies existed before. Maybe mad cow disease is a mutation of that.

The point is, we might well have gotten away with feeding bovine tissue to our cows for many years before mad cow came about. We can't get away with it now, though.

In order to err on the side of safety, it's best that we not feed any ruminent tissue (cows, goats, sheep, deer) to our cows, just in case mad cow disease did spring from a mutation from another species. We wouldn't want it to happen again.

My butcher told me that after 30 months old, I can't get the head, spinal column or organs back from a slaughter animal. He said that the disease had never been found in an animal younger than 36 months, so the 30 month figure leaves a margin of safety.

What you'll notice most if you take an older cow to be slaughtered is that you won't get T-bones and porterhouse steaks back. You'll get New York strips and filet mignons instead. Those are the two halves of the porterhouse once the bone (spine) is removed.

Genebo
Paradise Farm

Feeding bovine meat and bone meal or scraps has been illegal in th USA for quite awhile. They do still feed some porcine meat and bone meal, but not much.

Bovine products have not been feed to US cattle for quite awhile.

They are nothing alike. One is a virus that attacks the immune system and the other is from prions that causes the brain to turn to mush... sorta. Mad cow has been around for a very long time. It isn't just a recent disease.

How long has mad cow disease been around? When was it first discovered?

Genebo
Paradise Farm

Hey, look what I found on health.com:

"No one is sure what causes mad cow disease. One theory is that the disease is caused by a change in the shape of some of the proteins found in animal cells. This change may be caused by other abnormal proteins called prions. In affected cows, the abnormal proteins (prions) are found in the brain, spinal cord, and small intestine. Another theory is that mad cow disease is caused by a virus that causes the proteins to change and become abnormal (prions)."

Virus? A virus causes it?

I think the important part of the quote is, "No one is sure what causes mad cow disease."

I also found that it was first discovered in 1986, although it is suspected of being around since the 1970's. Which means it wasn't around for the first half of my life. You must be younger.

I also found that the youngest cow ever diagnosed with mad cow disease was 2 years old, not 3 years old as my butcher told me. The article that stated that didn't give any details.

All of the cows with mad cow disease in the US were born before the ban on feeding ruminent tissue to cows.

Two out of the three people to die of nvCJD in the US had spent a lot of time in the UK prior to developing the disease.

I found one site that vehemently denied the existence of such a disease. They also attacked organic food and fruits and vegetables.

I found enough stuff to read that it would take weeks to read it all. It's a popular subject.

It first came to light in dairy herds in England. Cows would become enraged (thus the 'mad' part) and stagger around. At the same time the English Dept. of Ag was pushing to eradicate warbler flies by having an orangeophorous (sp?) based pesticide poured onto the cows backs. Some speculation, particular by Richard Rhodes (Deadly Feasts: The "prion" controversy and the public's health.) is that is what triggered the fairly large outbreak. If one cow in the herd came down with MCD the entire head was slaughtered and burned (although cremation doesn't destroy the prions).

When I was visiting in Croatia in 2001 a cousin asked me if we had 'angry' cows in the U.S.

Symptoms are very similar to 'staggers', which is caused by cattle or sheep eating or drinking bladderworm tainted forage or water and it eating away at their brains.

However, nothing fits all of the cases. For example I remember reading of a cow in France having MCD. The herd had been closed for years and all of their feed was grown on the farm.

A theory which didn't receive much support was the cause originated in India. There partially fire consumed bodies were dumped into the Gandes River. They would become lodged on sandbars and the bones gathered to be crushed into bonemeal. If the person had died of CJD, CJD prions may have contaminated the bonemeal (which was sold to outside countries, such as England).

Also recall reading of one woman who had been a lifelong vegetarian getting vCJD. Explanation was she likely enhaled bone dust as it was being applied to her garden.

CJD appears to be spontaneous and is the cause of death of about 1/1M in the U.S. One reason why all instruments used in brain or spinal surgury are destroyed afterwards because if the patient had CJD normal sterilization wouldn't kill the prions. You pretty well cannot kill a prion except perhaps to drop it into a blast furnace pot.

Reason it was picked up in humans is younger people were coming down with CJD (then referred to a vCJD). Typically CJD doesn't strike until someone is over about 60 years of age.

During the MCD scare in England the selling of any beef with bone in it was prohibited. I understand a black market for boned cuts appeared.

Yep, think about all that hamburger in the meat case.:D

Yep, and low-cost cuts, and round steak, and brisket and stew meat.

There is an old saying 80% of the results come from the first 20% of effort. As you try to approach 100% you have to apply more and more resources. USDA is trying for 100% to prevent even one case of home-grown vCJD. Sometimes you just have to accept a risk.

Heck, who many will die from the current swine flue vaccine?

I think I remember reading that some thought that our native deer had a similar disease that causes periodic die offs. I believe it is called Chronic Wasting Disease. I don't believe that wild deer are getting animal-based protein supplements, so this may not have contributed to all of the cases of mad cow disease.

Yes, deer (and deer-related critters) in the U.S. can get CWD. How? One aspect may be eating the antlers from the previous year for the calcium in them. Do they also munch on the bones of dead animals they find for the same reason?

Is eating dropped antlers the reason some squirrel brains shouldn't be eaten?

Hunters in some areas are advised to wear protectives gloves and not use the head and spinal column.

Maybe 20-years ago now I visited with jd and Diane Belanger of Countryside Magazine fame. I mentioned to him a conversation I had with a woman who had a brother in England at the time. She said he said deer were observed stomping on and then eating rabbits/hares. He scoffed at the idea. Well.... jd just happened to have an extensive library of books, including almost all of the USDA Yearbooks. In one I found a reference to deer being observed eating fish from drying up pools of water. Close enough.

Had they been munching on dead carcasses for the calcium and came to associate the live with the carcasses?

Nutritional deficiencies can cause odd behavior. Pickles and ice cream ladies? A SIL got a craving for starch straight out of the box when pregnant.

Salt blocks have been used for a long time to attract animals.

I heard some where that mad cow has been wiped out?...

If it is indeed spontaneous it cannot be wiped out. Sort of like small pox. It is only thought to have been wiped out.

Say the chance of a cow having MCD is now 1/1M, and of those eating that beef the chances of acquiring vCJD from it is 1/1M. That's a lot of zeros.

You are probably more likely to be killed on your way home the grocery store.

Just thought I'd throw in that I was fortunate to study under a professor who was doing some research on Mad Cow. At the time, the understanding was that Mad Cow was caused by the feeding of cow nervous tissue to other cattle, but the actual protein was rumoured to have been identified as one produced by the spliced genes from a mouse and a lion. At the time, I didn't think much of that, but later, when we were learning more about genetic modification of food, it became apparent the mouse/lion genes probably really did come from a mouse and a lion and that the gene was INSERTED into something, either into a cow or into plants consumed by the cow. At any rate, the "misfolded" protein as they called it, had no genetic elements. The only way it could become infectious would be by reverse transcription. If it were actually changing the DNA of the cow it infected to make more of these proteins.
We were told this protein could withstand temperatures over 1200 F. We were also told that Krutzfeld Jacobs disease might have as long as a 12 year incubation period, though how they came up with that number is a mystery to me. I noticed that the disease seemed to go away out of the media, but it hasn't gone away. It's still infecting cows from time to time, despite the ban on feeding ruminant parts to other ruminants.
I am concerned that this bad protein may exist in plants as a genetic modification. If that were the case, even if all of the original seeds were destroyed, the wild relatives of any plants that contained those genes and cross pollinated with the GM plants could potentially carry them.
I haven't bothered to look into Mad Cow since I was in school, but I'm curious and I'm sure more research has been done since then. I'm glad the question was posted. If this prion protein was released into the world by some stupid GM modification of a cow or a crop, and if it could be proven, the lawsuits would be never-ending.

If that is so, I can just see the TV advertisements now, "If you or a loved one have suffered death or illness caused from ingesting ..........................

Isn't there a special forum for conspiracy theories?

Was watching program on one of the history-type channels on beef. Said at one time an extremely popular sandwich in the area of the Chicago stockyard was steamed cow brains with onions. Don't recall any outbreak of vCJD in Chicago.

In the book I mentioned earlier by Richard Rhodes he mentions Kuru in a tribe in, as I recall, New Guinea. They honor their dead ancesters by eating them and develop vCJD like symptoms, particular women and children who get the brain.

In cattle remember very few live to be very old. I've heard something like 95% of bulls never breed a cow. Even in dairy herds they only last a couple of years on the line now.

Personally I feel my theory MCD is sporatic, something triggered the MCD outbreak and MCD triggered CJD early in humans is as valid as anyone else's.

Linn,
That's funny! No doubt. The commercials would interrupt every good show.

I doubt any lawfirm would even take on a vCJD case. They would have to prove the source of vCJD (and it apparently can take several years to develop). Then, if indeed from a cow, trace it back through perhaps several owners, then prove the ultimate source of what gave the cow MCD.

For example, your supermarket hamburger may come from multiple cows, from multiple supply houses, from multiple sales barns and from multiple owners.

Animal identification wouldn't help in that case.