Chage to tofu or continue with steak. beef

[rtureck]

Change to tofu or continue with steak. beef

Unfortunately both US and Canda have the first cases of mad cow/ BSE. What will be your choice of meat or meat substitute?

I voted for e, but a is an attractive alternative too.

 

[Mathman]

Seriously, RT, what do you think? Is one case enough to cause legitimate concern?

MM

 

[pairsfan]

Don't go with E. Poultry is more contaminated than beef. Mad cow is the least of the concerns with beef. I'll spare you the details.

You can probably guess that I picked B.

 

[Tonichelle]

I'm big on BEEF always have been, always will be

We just have to be reeeeeeaaaaallllllllllllyyyyyyyyyy careful

 

[God]

Silly mortals, do some actual research on "Mad Cow Disease." There's a better chance the monitor you're reading this from will explode and kill you right this instance than you catching the fabled plague.

 

[heyang]

I voted E, but could've gone with eat less Beef, too.

According to articles, Mad cow disease affects the brain and nervous system. It doesn't necessarily affect the parts of the cow that most people are eating. Although I'm of Chinese descent, I don't eat brains. I realize some people have gotten mad cow disease, but I don' know if these people ate the brains or were in close contact with the infected animal.

"God" is right... it's important to do some research. The media only provides sound bites for the most part. Don't just read the headlines, read the entire article to better understand.

BTW, I was in London during the mad cow scare and I did eat some beef. Dining choices in London aren't great unless you're either willing to pay for good food or eat ethnic.

 

[rtureck]

Heyang, do you use seaweeds in Chinese cooking?

Pairsfan, I admire vegetarians, I tried to be one, but can not give up the meat.

Those prion: changes the protein inside the brain cells from the nice alpha helix to the horrible beta sheets -> cell death

I am not sure you have to eat the brains to catch BSE.

 

[RealtorGal]

I haven't eaten beef in 15 years, and I don't miss it at all. Just because I've changed my avatar from a cow to my new doggie doesn't mean I've stopped loving cows! MOO!

 

[Ladskater]

Vegetarianism has always appealed to me; however, being raised on beef, etc. it's difficult to change. I have tried several times. I always end up "falling off the wagon" at some point.

Even without the "mad cow" episodes, one hears of some horrible practices being used to provide us with our meat supplies. We probably would not be eating meat if we really knew the whole picture. However, I guess "ignorance is bliss" and so our carnivorous appetites continue.

 

[windspirit]

I've been a vegetarian for years (who eats fish, though -- I lurrve fish), so...

 

[Piel]

Voted D. but could go with E. We had our Christmas dinner this past Saturday and had standing rib roast as we do every year. Two of my aunts brought turkey breasts "just in case" while the family jokester kept referring to dinner as "the mad cow special". Almost half of the roast was left...which has never happened before.

Piel

 

[Pookie]

I won't quit eating beef. We also eat a lot of pork, poultry, fish. I couldn't be a vegetarian. You miss out on too many good foods.

 

[Grgranny]

I wish there were some way of getting good fish. In the midwest, it's almost impossible. Of course, if I were rich, I could
order it from the coast. The only place I've found any decent fish is Red Lobster. It's not as good as the coast but edible. I
especially like salmon and trout.

 

[Doggygirl]

I might be "Mad" but I'm no Cow!

I heard a doctor interviewed on the news this past Sunday. His recommendation was to avoide T-bone steaks in particular (all other muscle organ cuts are fine) and avoid organ meat including brains, liver, etc.

I have a friend in Holland who dealt with the Mad Cow scare long before we did, and she confirmed with that same advice.

Since you couldn't convince me to eat a cow brain under any circumstances LOL, I will continue to eat my favorite steaks.

LOL, my Grandparents used to raise cattle and the phrase "Mad Cow" just reminds me what it was like as kids to sneak into the pasture and have the bull discover we were there. During breeding season.

DG (I voted C)

 

[JOHIO2]

OK. Time to weigh in on this issue.

I've been cutting back on red meat, aka beef, and deep fried foods. Haven't given up either -- just cut back.

If we are going to get scared of the food supply, we have nothing left to eat. As was pointed out by others, poultry is infamous for salmonella, e coli, etc., etc. If you thought fish was safe......... well, I ve got bad news there. Watch out for those big fish and the mercury levels! (bye, bye tuna!) In the Great Lakes, we are told to limit the amount of fresh water fish we eat. And mercury isn't the only toxin soaked up by fishies.

Now, for the vegetarians......heard about those Mexican green onions and the e coli breakout in Western Pennsylvania? How do we know those are the only ones? Stopping eating at Chi Chi's was easy. I hardly ever ate there and the nearest one closed before the onion affair. But who is to say that even our homegrown veggies, raised on petroleum product fertilizer are any safer?

My question: what happens if the prion/Mad Cow epidemic started because of irradiated food? Can we blame the Europeans? I always knew there was a reason the US was leary of that process! Not much of a joke, but that is the way it goes.

 

[rtureck]

Mad cow disease affects the brain and nervous system. It doesn't necessarily affect the parts of the cow that most people are eating.

Heyang, technically you are correct. I looked up a reference book:

Goetz: Textbook of Clinical Neurology, 2nd ed., 2003 Elsevier

Variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (vCJD)
Epidemiology.
vCJD was first recognized in the United Kingdom in 1996, approximately 10 years after the BSE epidemic had begun, and the original cohort of 10 cases has since grown to more than 120, with six additional cases in France, one in Italy, and one in Ireland (countries in which BSE outbreaks have also occurred). New cases are being identified in the United Kingdom at the rate of about 20 per year, and predictive mathematical models that assume an average incubation period of 20 years or less—which is likely—estimate the eventual total tally to be several hundred cases. The most plausible explanation of vCJD is that humans became infected with the agent that causes BSE through the consumption of beef products containing central nervous system tissue (meat itself is not infectious, but mechanically recovered meat that is pressure-extracted from carcasses often contained spinal cord and paraspinal ganglia in addition to residual muscle shards

So even though the prions are technically only located in the brain and central nervous system, the infected CNS contaminates the meat during the slaughtering process.

To Mathman

I have done my homework, now question for you

predictive mathematical models

What kind of predictive math models are they using? How did they arrive at the conclusion of incubation period of ~ 20 years

Sigh to all

No one is willing to choose tofu and seaweeds? Last time I ate at Legal seafood in Boston, I ordered seaweeds as a side dish. I did't like the way they prepared it though, it was too sugary for my taste.

 

[heyang]

Mathman, nice job on the homework.

I was reading an internet article today about BSE. Based on that article "mechanically recovered meat that is pressure-extracted from carcasses often contained spinal cord and paraspinal ganglia in addition to residual muscle shards " means processed meats like hot dogs and vienna sausage, where the leftover cuts are ground up. Different from ground beef that are from specific cuts (ie. ground chuck, ground sirloin are ok)

Also, JOHIO2 is so right about how contaminated our food supply is. Unless you are growing the food yourself and not using any hormones and pesticides and purified water, there's chemicals in all food.

In the same article mentioned above, it mentions that ground up cattle parts are included in chicken feed - thus, these bad prions could be in the chickens too. There's also a similar disease in lamb which has been around for a lot longer than BSE - the goal is stamp it out by 2007. Currently, Australia is the only country allowed to export sheep for breeding as they are the only country without incidence of mad lamb disease.

Wish I could find that article. But here's an article about deadly scallions (due to poor handling, but just goes to show you never know.)


http://msnbc.msn.com/id/3669577/

BTW, Mathman. Predictive Math Models? Sorry, not my area of expertise.

Also, regarding seaweed. Yes, I've eaten it in various dishes. I think I've enjoyed it most when dining Korean style.

 

[show 42]

I'm not much of a meat eater period. I love veggies, pasta, and bread. I don't think my eating habits concerning meat will change much.42

 

[Mathman]

Heyang, you just gave me praise deserved by RTureck.

About these "predictive mathematical models," I don't know much about it. But epidemiology is an area that can often be modeled quite successfully using differential equations. Most textbooks with titles like "Ordinary Differential Equations and Their Applications" contain some simplified examples. (Shame on me, I just taught that course last semester, but we skipped that section, LOL.)

About the 20 year incubation period, this is an external parameter of the model, not a conclusion. There are two ways to go about determining it. The first is to call upon non-mathematical information (in this case, you might actually know something about the progress of the disease by studying individual cases). Secondly, if you have a large enough data base you can simply try different incubation times and see which one provides a model that fits the data best.

Mathman

 

[heyang]

OOps sorry Rturek. I obviously wasn't reading every word your wrote....I'll blame it on the stress of the season.

Thanks for giving credit where credit was due, Mathman....as well as for the explanation.