Poll: BSE 2020: Do you consider Beef safe to eat?

BSE 2020: Do you consider Beef safe to eat?

  • Yes

    Votes: 158 97.5%

  • No

    Votes: 4 2.5%
  • Total voters
    162
StriderX said:
I wonder if it's possible for prions to become pandemic level infectious or whether that's not possible?
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Yes it is. Chronic Wasting Disease in deer has decimated the deer population across the North American Continent, the prions are spread by casual contact and are excreted in urine so the entire earth becomes highly infectious for years with this disease.

Unseul said:
Thanks, thankfully it seems unlikely to lead to a major 2nd wave. The last paragraph states:

"Fortunately, it seems these prions only develop into disease in an unlucky few. Even if only 1 in 2000 people carry prion, 6000 cases of vCJD should have developed in people making only the M protein by now."
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It depends on whether the people that developed the disease were particularly susceptible to it for some other reason thus developed it after a shorter incubation period or not. Kuru for example only developed after 50 years after infection in some patients. Animal studies show huge variations in incubation periods for the same prion diseases in the same species.
 
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Jokester said:
Well, not quite - every case up till now has involved people that only make the specific M protein, but there has now been a case of someone who's genes make the two different versions (which I think is the more common variant) of the protein. There's a suspicion that because they make both types that the build up of the modified prion takes a substantially longer period of time, if that's the case then there could be a larger 2nd wave (though obviously not the 100,000s of people the press at the time were saying).
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Yeah, but as stated in the article, if it was as prevelant, and active, as stated, we would have expected to see 6k cases in the M protein people alone, let alone everyone else.

As we haven't seen that many in the M protein only folk, we really shouldn't expect to see many in the people that produce both protein varients.

EDIT - Still one of my favourite jokes.

2 cows stood in a field.
One says to the other "Does this mad cow disease thing worry you?".
The 2nd replies "No, not at all."
First asks "Why not?"
Second says "I'm a duck.".
 
Jokester said:
Almost 200 people died of vCJD (the type caused by BSE).

There's a bigger issue now with just bog standard CJD killing people which has been linked to the re-use of contaminated surgical instruments amonst other things.

Edit:
Was sure I linked this before:-
https://www.cjd.ed.ac.uk/sites/default/files/figs.pdf
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Has anyone got a clip of the then Home Secretary I think he was saying live on camera saying beef was perfectly safe to eat and stuffing a burger in his kid's mouth? I always remember that especially recently when people like Gove says schools etc are safe to reopen and theres no risk from virus.
 
Blackjack Davy said:
Has anyone got a clip of the then Home Secretary I think he was saying live on camera saying beef was perfectly safe to eat and stuffing a burger in his kid's mouth? I always remember that especially recently when people like Gove says schools etc are safe to reopen and theres no risk from virus.
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I remember that video, it was deeply disturbing, seeing a politician using a child as a political tool and putting them at a risk of a horrible death.
 
Jokester said:
https://www.newscientist.com/articl...uld-still-die-from-mad-cow-disease-in-the-uk/

1 in 2000 people in the UK have the prion based on estimates from removed appendices. That's ~32,500 people.
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And as that link suggests the true number could be much higher because not everyone with vCJD has positive tonsil or appendix biopsies.

What is also concerning is as the article suggests, is the massive increase in diagnoses of CJD over the past 20 years, some of which can probably be attributed to better awareness and diagnostics however it may also be attributable to a different presentation of vCJD in MV patients, an increase of over 100% over 10 years.
 
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Ice Tea said:
Talking to a friend about not having to use the lockdown corned beef or tins of beef stew and apparently his misses still refuses to eat beef because of BSE and doesn't let their kids eat it either.I thought that this was sorted out years ago that the transmission is now so low you now have more chance of winning the rollover Lotto?

I'm not going to stop , what else is there to have with Mustard... :D
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Pork pie. Slather English mustard on your pork pie until your nose and eyes start to run.

It's horseradish that protects against BSE.
 
Ice Tea said:
I'm not going to stop , what else is there to have with Mustard... :D
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Pork Pie!!!! For some reason you can put 10x more mustard on pork pie and it is not painful like if you put far too much on anything else. I am sure there is some magic in the pork pie.

bah, beaten by Mr Badger :(
 
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