No more ox tail? Mad cow problem

[HamdenRice]

I came over here from GD after reading about mad cow disease to ask a question of the cooking enthusiasts. As many of you probably know, a cow in Alabama was recently found to have mad cow disease, the third in the US.

One of my favorite recipes is ox tail, and the tail is a continuation of the spinal cord. Ox tail is one of my favorite dishes. I also use homemade beef stock to make ox tail, and the beef bones I have used in the past to make the stock are the beef neck bones readily available as stew bones in the local super markets.

From your perspectives is it time to stop eating ox tail and making stock from neck bones? Or are the risks too miniscule to worry?

Have any of you changed your cooking habits?

[The empressof all]

1. I have altered my purchasing somewhat

When I want to purchase beef I spend the extra money and buy grass-fed only meat. It is more expensive but we've cut back on it so it evens out. We only eat beef about once a week. I no longer buy hot dogs or processed meat that contains beef like some polish sausages. I'm using up a jar of beef Better than Bouillon and will need to think long and hard before I buy another.

The reality is that the symptoms of mad cow often take 20 odd years to manifest. At this point my family may already have it. We've eaten beef all throughout Europe and the United States. Who knows!

I choose to be overly cautious. My rational brain tells me I'm being rather strident in my new purchasing practices. It gives me a little peace of mind so I really don't care.

I think if you can't/won't give up the stock and the oxtails talk to your butcher about getting a natural grass fed brand of beef. TJ's sells it as does my local upscale grocery. It's far more expensive, but I sleep a little better at night.

The reality is that it's hard to be an absolute purist about it and I'm not ready to go Vegan again. Gelatin is also made from bone material btw. It's an ingredient in many foods not just in Jello. It's frequently added to yogurts and bakery frostings for stabilizing.

[politicat]

2. *I* have stopped using beef that come from herds that I can't trust.

In otherwords, no more supermarket or Costco beef.

I get my beef from either Coleman Ranch or Lasater Grasslands beef. It's not cheap, but since I buy it in bulk, it evens out. Pork, chicken and lamb hit our menu pretty frequently (and fish as often as I can manage to sneak it in.) I use a lot of lamb to replace beef, since scrapie doesn't seem to enter the human food chain as easily as BSE does. (Scrapie is the sheep variation of a prion disorder.) http://www.lasatergrasslandsbeef.com/

With Lasater, I can get bones. They ship to the continental US by UPS second day in sytrofoam with dry ice, though I drive out and pick up a package every 4 months or so, but I can do that. They're only four hours away.

A lot of times when I need stock and am out, I'll dissolve vegamite in hot water. It tastes like beef stock (if a bit saltier, but not as salty as commercial stock) if it's cooked with a couple of carrots, a couple of ribs of celery and an onion.

I tend to be very careful about beef to begin with, though. I grew up on hand-raised beef raised by a relative on grass and our hay and corn, so I'm spoiled to begin with. I've seen slaughterhouse practices for IBP and it's bad enough to make a Bengal Tiger turn vegetarian. E Coli scares me more than BSE, but I'm still careful about it because I've had relatives by marriage die of Alzheimer's. It's not a death I want, and Creutzfeldt-Jacob is quite similar, if faster.

[eleny]

9. Have you found organic lamb locally?

I'm going to tell hubby about Lasater's. He'd really enjoy driving down there with me. I think it's time to break down and make room for a deep freeze. I'm so glad I read this thread and found your posting. You're a real wonder when it comes to knowing about great things available in CO.

[Warpy]

17. Solid cuts of muscle meat are probably reasonably safe

but I'd stay away from discount hamburger. They grind that stuff right off the bone, contaminating it with periosteal material which contains a lot of nerve fibres.

In fact, I'd stay away from hamburger, period, and just grind my own. The two cleaver method works really well for those who don't have a food processor and is nearly as quick. The cleanup's a lot easier.

[Warpy]

3. You are more likely to hit the lottery or be struck by lightning

than you are to get mad cow disease at present. It's just not that common a thing in beef cattle. It's much more common out west in wild meat, especially elk. There's quite an epidemic of wasting disease, a variant of scrapie/mad cow/CJD in western elk herds.

All muscle meats contain some nerve tissue, although not nearly as much as in the tail or in neck bones. All meat from an infected cow is potentially infective, which is why we want downer cows out of the food chain completely.

Everything we do in life carries risk, and most things we do now are far riskier than eating beef, even beef bones containing spinal cord tissue. If I liked meat, I'd probably go with the statistics, although I'd stick to organically raised meat because I don't want mine adulterated with hormones and antibiotics.

[politicat]

4. E coli + listeria + hormones+ antibiotics + labor practices +

sanitary issues + BSE...

When you start adding it up, eating beef is scary.

[Warpy]

5. Pork and chicken are scarier.

Most beef animals are range fed until their final fattening. That's when they're crowded onto feed lots and that's when they start needing antibiotics so that diseases won't spread like wildfire among the stressed, overcrowded animals.

Chickens and hogs are factory farmed from birth, packed into pens, pumped full of antibiotics and hormones to hasten fattening, and kept in appalling conditions all their lives.

I'm not a morality vegetarian, I've just never been fond of meat. However, I can't bring myself to eat anything that has been factory farmed. The cruelty plus the danger plus the load of drugs do it for me.

[kestrel91316]

7. I'm not a "morality" vegetarian, either. But I am gradually becoming

a "sanitation" vegetarian, lol.

[politicat]

8. Here are the laws on poultry and pork:

Hormones are illegal for use in poultry and pork. (http://www.fsis.usda.gov/Fact_Sheets/Duck_&_Goose_from_Farm_to_Table/index.asp and http://www.fsis.usda.gov/oa/pubs/pork.htm) Antibiotics may only be used to treat disease or prevent disease (if transmissible), and any animal which has had antibiotics must be held for a withdrawal period after the last day of administration. This withdrawal period is dictated by law. It is based on the rate that antibiotics are metabolized out of the body.

Economically, the reality is that chickens rarely get antibiotics. They go to slaughter when they're 7 weeks old and if the chicks are quarantined before introduction to the chicken house (as is usual) disease doesn't usually take hold. In most cases, it's cheaper to just pull the sick bird (if it can be caught quick enough) and destroy it. Five gallons of Cipro may cost as much as the house full of day old chicks did. Chickens that are not allowed outside are not likely to contract diseases from wild birds. And organic chickens may be given antibiotics in case of disease outbreak - they're just not allowed to have feed that is less than 80% organic. Laying hens may not be given antibiotics or hormones. Laying hens that get sick must be pulled out of the production line.

A single sick bird in a flock can mean the difference between breaking even and a loss; thus sick birds are pulled out. The big problem with chicken is environmental (what do you do with the waste, which is high in ammonia and arsenic), labor (the farmers are pretty heavily exploited by the big companies) and industrial (injury rates at poultry packing plants are some of the worst in all fields). Poultry waste is also nasty for campylobacter and salmonella.

Chickens tend to bioacumulate arsenic that occurs naturally in water and soil, and most of the chicken consumed in the US comes from areas that test high for arsenic. Most "organic" chicken comes from California, rather than the Gulf Coast and southern Midwest; California does not have the naturally occurring arsenic that much of the Mississippi valley and Great Lakes region has. (Due to the differences in tectonic plates, if I remember my geology courses correctly.)

"Free range" or "natural" or "Roaming" doesn't mean anything. They're not USDA regulated labels. The first and last merely mean that the chicken house door was left open, and natural means no colors, additives or preservatives were added. Organic only applies to feed (and only 80% of the feed must be organic). In fact, raising chickens indoors, in dim light, in raised cages is better for the chickens - they're less likely to cannibalize each other, less likely to peck each other, and less likely to contract respiratory disease caused by contact with their own droppings and the ammonia it contains. I eat chickens out of a sense of revenge - they're mean if they're not kept in semi-dark (so they stay sleepy). Ducks make better pets; geese make excellent watch dogs. (As it happens, all poultry laws apply to all birds, including turkeys, Cornish rock hens, squab and farm raised pheasant.) But chickens have the personality of mean drunks on the morning after a big binge.

As for the big three of chicken, Perdue, Tyson and Foster Farms all quit putting antibiotics in feed by 2002, and even then was only used when other management strategies failed. (Citation: USDA regulations, supermarketguru.com, Time). There is a 7 day withdrawal period for poultry from last day of administration. Hormones have not been used since the 50s when they were banned for all poultry production. Chickens are bred for size, but not goosed into size by hormone supplements. (FSIS-USDA, Foster Farms, Perdue, Tyson, www.eco-labels.org)

As for pork, hogs may only receive antibiotics to treat or prevent a disease, and the withdrawal period between last date of administration and sale for slaughter is 6 weeks in shoats, 8 weeks in mature hogs. All antibiotics are metabolized out of the body within that period of time. Any animal found upon inspection to carry antibiotic residue is removed from the human consumption line.

No hormones are allowed in the raising of hogs. None. Period. That's USDA reg. (Food Safety and Inspection Service of the USDA.) Because they're social, omnivorous creatures, putting them on the same type of free range as free range cattle would kill them - either they would kill the weakest members of the group or they would starve without access to a balanced diet. There's a reason pigs have traditionally been fed slops - that's what they do best on. (Our pigs get a diet that is about 25% our corn and 25% our soy, and 50% comes from the food waste generated by the local Mennonite school in Indiana - which is their own, organic food.) The problem with commercially raised hogs is again, waste and labor, though hog slaughtering is, on par, safer than either beef or chicken. The other problem is traditional, not current, and that is trichinosis. The last outbreak in the United States was in 1990, and was traced back to a Mhong wedding and pigs that were not factory farmed, but hand-raised. There have also been outbreaks related to bear meat, but since that's not commercially available, it's really not a factor.

I have to know these regs - I drew the short straw when the family trust management changed after my great-grandfather's death - we are an organic farm and we raise hogs, some chickens (for local consumption), organic soy and organic corn. (Somebody in the family had to learn the laws when my cousin opted out.) The links I gave you above are the consumer links - the real regs are about a 13 inch stack of single spaced, 8x11 print out and they change every year. But hormones and antibiotics don't change. The producers don't want it to change - it would drive up costs.

We raise about 400 hogs, 300 chickens and 3500 acres of hay, corn, soy and truck (crop rotation.) Everything save the truck is sold through the co-op. We're organic because my great-grandfather was too cheap to use chemicals when "fertilizer falls out of the cow's fanny." However, our neighbors are standard; their methods vary not all that much from ours, except they use Round-up on their beans and corn, and they get a lower price for their pork bellies. (Our neighbors are third cousins, twice removed by marriage... or something like that. I'm related to half the state.) We don't raise beef anymore at all - it's just too expensive for the return. A pound of pork costs us 4 pounds of feed, a pound of whole chicken costs about 2.5 pounds of feed, but even a pound of grass-fed beef costs about 16 pounds of hay and feed. With our acreage, we can't afford them.

The sad part is that the morality vegetarians have lied to us when it comes to how meat is managed. Even Consumer Reports can't be trusted on this - you have to go straight to the regs. Cute pictures of chickens chasing bugs in a grassy meadow are marketing; there is no way to even break even if you're raising more than for your own family's consumption due to the waste handling measures that we have to follow. If you sell more than 45 birds or 24 hogs a year, you are subject to USDA regulation whether you're organic or not.

As for beef... my husband grew up on a dairy farm, and one of the Horizon organic dairies is within 20 miles of my house. Happy Cows is not exactly accurate... but the cows out in Matheson, where Lasater is located, are (or, at least they're as happy as any cow I've ever met).

[Warpy]

12. First, thanks for going organic!

It's really the wave of the future, producing superior foodstuffs in terms of nutrition and safety, and much more economical once the whole system gets established.*

Thanks also for the cut to the chase version of Federal food regulations. The problem is that the waiting period for cattle after they've been medicated doesn't happen very often. When those cows and steers are fat and ready to move off the feed lot, they go, according to the cattle growers around here. It's interesting that they've stopped feeding expensive antibiotics to chickens. That's overdue and a great thing to know.

It's hard to tell when a cow is happy, they don't tend to wear their hearts on their forelegs. It's hard to think of them as being particularly placid on a feed lot, though. Just the stench of the waste they're standing in would stress them.

The problem with hogs, as you stated, is the waste. Pigs aren't perfume under the best of conditions, as anyone who's driven through the midwest in August in a car without AC can tell you, and yes, they aren't range animals. The potential for contagion in factory farm systems is extreme, though, and the conditions are horrible.

*analyses of organically raised grain show a slight increase in protein content, while the average protein content of grain (especially wheat) in the US has been declining slowly over the past 50 years. Anecdotal evidence from organic farmrers has said that yields are marginally greater than commercial yields once the system is established, although they may only be reacting to the end of lousy yields during the transition period.

[politicat]

16. We've always been organic.

My great-great-grandfather had never heard of chemical fertilizer, and my great-grandfather didn't see the purpose. Since our land has remained productive and healthy, there was no point in switching.

We're just doing what a lot of the Mennonite and Amish in the area do - take care of the land and let it take care of us.

[HamdenRice]

30. LOL: "I eat chickens out of a sense of revenge - they're mean "

Well that was certainly informative. But I thought that the chicken line was very funny. Will think about this and want to ask a few follow up questions.

[Shakespeare]

31. awwww....our pet chickens were GREAT!

We're temporarily chicken-less, but keeping a couple of hens (and falling in love with them as pets) made us REALLY aware of what factory farmed birds are put through. I can't bear to watch the TV footage of battery cage-kept laying hens, who look like the saddest creatures on earth, especially compared with our sassy little (well, not so little) free-ranging layers. Even though it hurts a bit financially, we'll now purchase only organic, free-range chickens (and eggs). It's much better for our health, but it's even better for my heart and conscience (and that's the biggest reason we do so).

We're looking forward to keeping chickens again, and will probably make "pets" of our layers like we did before. They're a riot to have around, and can be really sweet. We'll probably let one rooster live past adolescence (so the hens can have a little lovin'), and will put in the time to make him a "pet"--as much for our own sanity (not just enjoyment). A mean rooster is a nasty thing to have around, but if you have the time to turn it into a pet, they're actually fun critters.

(and I also want ducks...and a goose...and anything else I can talk my husband into....)

[kestrel91316]

6. Ahem (tapping Warpy on shoulder).......

I hate to bother you, BUT prions are found in cattle long before they are terminal with BSE and fall down. Prions are in the infected cattle from the day they get infected, which can be ten years before death.

Because we are only testing downers, we are missing HUGE numbers of infected, but NOT YET DOWN cattle IMHO.

So says DU's own (cat) vet.

[Warpy]

11. I know prions take a long time to manifest as disease

but until disease is manifested, the load in muscle tissue is negligible. Yes, we're missing all the other cattle on that feed lot who have been infected, but they're only there for a few weeks, not enough time for prion disease to disseminate through all nerve tissue, much less muscle tissue.

Most neurologists go through careers never seeing the human equivalent, Creutzfeld-Jakob disease. I've seen three cases in 40 years. It is incredibly rare.

The best thing we can do is minimize the problem. When a cow/steer starts showing symptoms, you can bet the brain and spinal cord are affected and infective and quite probably the meat is, also. Eliminating meat and blood from other downer animals from the feed system is essential to reduce transmission. Nothing is going to stop it completely, though, and only culling downer animals of all species and removing them from the food supply will slow it down.

You can burn prions to ashes and they'll still be infective. You can compost them for years and they'll still be infective. They are incredibly stable. That's what is scariest about the prion theory of spongiform encephalitis. One of the few things you can do to destroy them is thermal depolymerization, an under utilized technology in a lot of areas.

I don't eat meat because I don't particularly like it. However, if I did crave it, I'd go with the statistics. V-CJD is a very scary disease, and once you've seen a case in a human, you'll never forget it. However, it remains one of the rarest of the rare diseases out there.

[livetohike]

13. My husband's aunt passed away from CJD in 1993

It was awful. Yes, we were told it was rare back then. Also, they have to dispose of any surgical tools which were used on her (brain biopsy to get the diagnosis). We were all given info from a medical journal on what was known about the disease back then.

My husband can no longer donate blood since he had a blood relative with the disease.

It is a scary disease, you are right.

[SoCalDem]

14. I have a sneaky suspicion

that someday alzheimers may be linked to it as well.. I wonder if there is already a connection, but no one is being told about it.. The people who are elderly NOW and have alzheimers were from a "beef-eating era", and since it takes a long time for the disease to manifest itself (CJD), perhaps their lifelong habits put them at greater risk.. :shrug:

These things are difficult to figure, since this generation of oldsters is the first (and probably the last) to actually live so long.. My grandparents' era died in their 70's, but at least had access to purer sources of food for a large part of their lives.. Everyone around now has been exposed to franken-food since the 60s & 70s so our lives are kind of a crapshoot...modern food vs modern drugs.. who will "win"?

[livetohike]

15. Good points

My husband's aunt was 65 in 1993. She had never traveled outside the U.S., not even to Canada or Mexico. We were told the disease could lie dormant for over twenty years! The only thing the family could offer to a clue was that while growing up she ate alot of lamb (family was Croatian and new immigrants to America - but she was born here).

I don't trust the government in this. I wouldn't doubt if Altzheimers is somehow tied to CJD and I think cows have been infected here for years. Just my opinion.

[bettyellen]

18. there was a cluster of CJD here in NJ, and a woman made connection

... that all the people ate at a certain race track during a certain time period. Of course local health officials deny there's any connection and label it as some sort of spontaneously occuring form of CJD, even though the odds are astronomical.
scary.

[Warpy]

19. Both my parents were heavy meat eaters who felt deprived

if they didn't have meat 3 times a day. They both survived into their late 80s with no dementia. However, there may indeed be a link between prion disease and Alzheimer's, although they haven't turned up prions in the amyloid plaques from brains of Alzheimer's patients, not that I know of.

In fact, the prion/CJD link hasn't been established beyond doubt. It's just the likeliest hypothesis right now. They've tried to isolate the "slow virus" for decades, and never found that, either.

What we do know from experience in the UK is that the carcases of downer animals need to be disposed of outside the food chain.

[SoCalDem]

20. My grandparents too (born in 1889 & 1886)

they had bacon or ham & eggs for breakfast every day
porkchops, roast beef, steak, meatloaf, chicken etc for "dinner & supper"

meat EVERY meal... and pies...and cookies..and fresh veggies..and mashed potatoes with almost every meal & gravy..

They had no weight problems, but both died young by today's standards..she with leukemia and he with a stroke..

They did not live to be 90-somethings, but they enjoyed their lives and their deaths were not "years-in-the making"..and until their final undoings, I never remember them being ill or taking medicine./.

We could learn from them :).. I see so many people whose whole lives revolove around meds, hospitals & doctors..and I wonder..would I want to live like that?? I keep saying HELL NO!

[kestrel91316]

21. Wow, are you a neurologist?

It's fun to find fellow medical professionals on DU to pick their brains and trade tales of interesting cases.

I'm a veterinarian (ColoStU 1982) and have been exclusively a feline practitioner for the past 15 years. I have a BS in Microbiology also from CSU.

Prions scare the living daylights out of me. My imagination runs amok (but then it did with Y2K and other assorted scares, lol). My current obsessive fear is avian flu (H5N1) because of the dire implications for us feline practitioners should it acquire the ability to infect humans more readily. It has quite a field day in cats.

[Warpy]

23. No, but most of my experience has been split

between neurology and cardiology with side trips into oncology and trauma. I saw one case of CJD in a mental hospital down south, the other two in Boston, where you're going to see a lot of stuff you don't see elsewhere.

I know what you mean about felines. My two pampered rescued furballs are indoor cats and likely to remain so. The last thing I want is a cat sick with avian flu or the other big deal around here, bubonic plague, both of which can be transmitted to owners.

My guess is that in any case where you see a fulminating respiratory disease in an outdoor cat, gloves and masks might be in order. And Virex.

[kestrel91316]

25. What scares me is that we vets all have such a blase attitude

about respiratory Dz in cats.............dime a dozen, never a threat to humans, blah blah blah. But there are the occasional cases of cats or squirrels brought in to vets with nasty resp Dz and they turn out to have PLAGUE. One vet died of pneumonic plague years ago in Southern Cal, and a woman vet maybe 10 years ago in (IIRC) CO got pneumonic plague from a sick cat and actually lived to tell about it, after being felled in less than 24 hrs after exposure. And still we never even think of coughing/sneezing kitties as dangerous. How do we retrain our brains after decades of not worrying??? I am just as guilty of this as the next vet......

[kestrel91316]

22. Oh, BTW, have you heard about the variant of BSE they found

a couple of years ago in Italy called Amyloidotic BSE? It produces (in cattle) amyloid plaque virtually identical to that found in human Alzheimer's Dz, rather than the more typical spongiform destruction.

This also gave me the willies. I have heard that a significant percentage of Alzheimer's cases (10% or more??) may in fact be misdiagnosed sCJD, and I wonder about a link to this ABSE.

[Warpy]

24. No, I hadn't heard about that

but I'm not surprised. It would certainly explain part of what we used to call "Feldman's famous family," a family of Italians many of whom developed Alzheimer's by the time they turned 40. If the contamination were regional, it would explain the cluster in that family, since CJD is thought to be passed in blood and body fluids as well as a shared diet of contaminated food. I'll look it up to see what region it's from...

So far, I've found one scary case history involving a cat at http://brain.hastypastry.net/forums/archive/index.php/t-2104.html although it seems from the timeline the kitty was infected by the human, not the reverse.

An abstract from the Italian team is at http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=365745 but doesn't have the name of the town, and I'm not altogether certain I'd recognize it narly 20 years down the road from dealing with the famous family. They just isolated it from 3 breeds of cattle, though, not from humans.

I'll keep looking. This is interesting stuff.

[kestrel91316]

26. I'm betting on the kitty and man being infected by a common source:

he was feeding the cat bits of whatever he was eating from the table, I bet. Denial of this habit is common. 60 yr old Italian man with cat - YES, of course he gave kity treats, lol! Too bad how it ended.

[bettyellen]

27. when you keep in mind that alzheimers is only 100% diagnosed through

an autopsy it does make you wonder. the diagnosis (at least a few years ago) was arrived at through the process of elimination.
so much that they still don't know. both of my parents had beef pretty much every day, both suffer(ed) from fatal neurological diseases.
i tend to read up on this stuff, but wasn't familiar with the happenings in italy. scary.

[Warpy]

28. Actually, the signs of late stage Alzheimer's are pretty obvious

on a CAT scan. The brain tissue has partially atrophied and the ventricles have enlarged. CJD generally doesn't show any changes until it's examined microscopically, and then the Swiss cheese appearance of the sections of brain tissue are diagnostic of it.

The disease is different from CJD in its presentation, too, since it develops from the higher brain centers downward, affecting memory first, then speech and movement, and finally the autonomic functions. CJD is rapid and global, affecting everything at once.

Like I told my Pop, he didn't have to worry about mild forgetfulness turning into Alzheimer's until he went out to get the paper one morning and couldn't remember where he lived when he picked it up. That never happened.

[bettyellen]

29. you mean when it's waaay too late to treat?

actually you can see the athrophy quite a bit earlier than late stage. i did with my own mom, and i won't soon forget it.
but the specialists still officially consider it a best guess diagnosis until they see the plaques and tangles. :shrug:

[SoCalDem]

10. um..NECK - "northern" continuation of spinal cord

Prions contaminate OTHER beef products, not just the cow-part that YOU eat..