Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy Essay ⋆ Environment Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

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Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE) is a communicable, chronic, degenerative, and fatal disease that predominantly affects the central nervous system of cattle. Affected animals’ brain tissue becomes increasingly damaged by lesions of sponge-like holes that commonly cause animals to exhibit behavioral symptoms such as dementia, aggression, lack of balance, and excessive salivation. As a result, BSE has become more popularly known as “mad cow disease.” During the early 1990s, a “mad cow” epidemic emerged in the United Kingdom (UK) and then spread throughout Europe, decimating beef industries in affected nations and terrifying populaces. While it is believed that the disease has presently leveled off considerably due to stricter livestock testing and policy changes designed to limit BSE’s contagious viability, new cases of BSE continue to appear in nations previously unaffected by the disease, such as the United States.

BSE is one of a class of brain diseases classified as Transmissible Spongiform Encephalopathies (TSEs) that are contracted by human and non-human animals. Non-human TSEs also include Chronic Wasting Disease in deer and elk, Transmissible Mink Encephalopathy, Feline Spongiform Encephalopathy, and Scrapie found in goats and sheep. Human TSEs include Kuru, Gerstmann-Straussler-Scheinker Syndrome, Fatal Familial Insomnia, and CreutzfeldtJakob disease. Notably, in 1996, a new variant of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD) was diagnosed, and while it has never been proven that BSE directly causes vCJD, many experts now believe that vCJD results when BSE crosses the species barrier and achieves human transmission. Unlike many other infectious diseases that are transmitted by virus or bacteria, TSEs are believed to be caused by misshapen, self-replicating body proteins called prions, and TSEs are spread through contact with prion-infected tissue or fluids, particularly through consumption. Unlike most bacteria and viruses, however, prions are believed to survive normal refrigeration and cooking procedures. Thus, it is believed that vCJD generally occurs after persons have eaten meat infected with BSE.

Propagation and Origins

BSE has been greatly propagated due to the widespread adoption of controversial factory farm feeding practices, in which slaughterhouse waste by-products, often described as “meat and bone meal” (MBM), are incorporated into cattle feed as a protein additive in order to generate weight gain in livestock. This practice resulted in the mass propagation of the disease when MBM from infected herds was utilized as feed. Technically, such feeding practices have existed since the early 20th century, but it is only over the last few decades with the rise of factory farms as agro-industry standards that MBM feeding became truly ubiquitous for millions of animals. Thus, while it is possible that BSE has been transferred between individual animals for some time via MBM, it is only since the 1970s that agricultural conditions have existed that would allow for the development of a BSE epidemic on national and global levels.

The origins of BSE remain mysterious. One leading theory purports that BSE originated when sheep infected with Scrapie were fed to cattle, which were in turn rendered and then fed to other cattle, thereby resulting in a mutated BSE prion. However, a competing theory claims that the disease developed spontaneously. The British government, for instance, maintains that BSE arose spontaneously in a small number of UK cattle sometime during the 1970s. Those favoring the theory of spontaneous origin also point to the discovery in Italy during 2003, and in countries such as France and the United States, of an apparently new form of BSE-causing prion. The disease associated with this prion has been named Bovine Amyloidotic Spongiform Encephalopathy (BASE), but scientists note that, except for the different mutations between the BASE and BSE prions, the two diseases are largely equivalent in terms of their prognosis. This has led some to believe that BASE is a spontaneous strain of BSE that developed outside of the United Kingdom.

While BSE has been discovered in some 35 countries, it is perhaps most closely linked to the UK. Authorities in the UK first officially identified BSE during 1986. Over the next 15 years, more than 180,000 animals contracted the disease, and billions of dollars in damage was done to the British cattle industry as international bans on the importation of British beef products ensued. The resulting public alarm led to a mass cull of over four million head of asymptomatic cattle in an attempt to ensure safety, and in 1988 the British government became the first of many nations to ban the use of ruminant proteins in the manufacture of animal feed. A year later, they enacted a ban of specified bovine offals, such as ruminant brain, spinal, and intestinal meat, for human consumption. By 1993, the worst of the epidemic was over in the UK, but the export of British cattle and MBM had begun to seed BSE in many other countries. Then, beginning in 1995, the first of about 160 people began to die of vCJD, and studies began to predict the emergence over time of thousands of additional cases. As the British government had repeatedly promoted the safety and quality of British beef throughout the preceding decade’s crisis, sometimes in opposition to its own scientific findings, critics charged that the government consciously put public health in jeopardy in order to stabilize the large economic losses suffered by the beef industry.

Testing and Prevention

In the United States, consumer groups argue that the government uses inaccurate tests and small testing samples, as well as lax MBM regulation policies and enforcement practices. Stanley Prusiner, who won a Nobel Prize in 1997 for his work on BSE, has called for U.S. testing to mirror standards achieved by Japan and the European Union (EU). Japan tests all cattle slaughtered for human consumption and every suspect farm animal, totaling some 1.2 million cattle annually at a cost of over $30 million. Likewise, the EU tests all slaughtered cattle older than 30 months and all nonambulatory livestock older than two years, involving more than 10 million animals annually at a yearly cost of $300 million. Meanwhile, the United States seeks only random testing of sick and nonambulatory cattle, which would involve a mere 20,000 animals at a cost of around $500,000 per year. Considering that monetary losses to a nation’s beef industry often run into the billions when BSE is discovered, stringent testing standards may prove prudent. Many nations may lack the political will to create such policy, though, especially when BSE and vCJD epidemics no longer dominate the headlines. Still, the disease continues to evolve, and the conditions that gave rise to an epidemic may continue to exist..

Bibliography:

Paul Brown, et al., “Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy and Variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease: Background, Evolution, and Current Concerns,” Emerging Infectious Diseases (v.7/1, 2001);
Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber, Mad Cow S.A. (Common Courage Press, 2004);
Peter Smith and Ray Bradley, “Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy and its Epidemiology,” British Medical Journal (v.66/1, 2003);
Maxime Schwartz, How the Cows Turned Mad (University of California Press, 2003);
Patrick Van Zwanenberg and Erik Millstone, “BSE, A Paradigm of Policy Failure,” Political Quarterly (v.74/1, 2003).