How is mad cow disease prevented?

Answer 1

You should vaccinate for it and just wait and see. If you find the symptons of it with your animals, (human s also). Report it to your local DNR facility or call your doctor immediately.

Answer 2:The answer above is complete nonsense. There is no vaccine for the disease because it is not caused by an infectious agent, rather a misfolded protein or prion which is not deemed a "foreign" body by the body and thus does not encourage white-blood cells or T cells from coming in to attack.

In order to prevent from getting CJD (Cruetzfeldt-Jakobson Disease, the human-form of "Mad Cow Disease"), you can either opt to not eat beef at all, or complete avoid eating processed meat that contains beef, including ground beef. Also avoid eating any specialty meats that are prone to housing these prions, including the brain and spinal cord.

Cattle cannot ever be vaccinated for this disease because there is no vaccine suitable to prevent this condition. Instead, to prevent cattle from getting this disease is to not feed any feed that contains any form of animal by-product. Feeding just straight grain, no special things mixed with it, is much safer to feed to cattle. A mandatory feed ban in Canada has been put in place for quite some time now which means not feeding any form of animal by-product to ruminants, including chicken litter or feed intended for chickens, fish and pigs.

Answer 2

Don't eat beef or mutton that you suspect hasn't been handled properly nor hygenically. Even better, don't eat the brains from sheep or cattle.

Keeping good records and not feeding animal by-product-based protein nor buying feed from the feed store is two major things that may help prevent BSE in your herd.

Answer 3

there is no cure for mad cow, however you can prevent it .Choose solid muscle cuts of meat rather than bone-in cuts. This will reduce your chance of contact with nervous tissue.

Avoid ground beef, sausage and Hot Dogs. These products are more likely to have contaminated nervous tissue ground inside.

Don't Answers.com beef in countries where outbreaks have occurred in the past, such as the United Kingdom. It can take two to eight years for symptoms to develop, making it difficult to determine if the disease has been completely wiped out.

Avoid beef altogether. If you are still not comfortable with the risk of contracting vCJD, stick to a diet of chicken and fish instead of beef. You could also opt for a vegetarian diet.

Answer 4

There are two preventive measure in place around the world - destroy the carcass of any cow found to be infected and do not allow rendered (highly cooked and processed) bovine proteins to be fed back to cattle or any other ruminants. Between these two measures, the incidence (occurrence of new cases) of BSE in cattle has dropped to almost zero around the world - Canada's last case of BSE was over 18 months ago. Because of this, the risk of death from vCJD (the human version of BSE) has also dropped dramatically.

Answer 5

Whatever you do, DO NOT, under any circumstances, feed cattle ANY feed that has any sort of animal by-product in it, no matter if it's chicken or pig feed, or anything like that. Don't let the animals have access to chicken feces either, if the feces come from chickens that have been fed ruminant animal by-products. Ultimately, if you can, keep from feeding cows grain and just keep them on grass and hay. But if you have to feed them grain, get the grain from a local grain farmer or some other farmer that will have grain that is most likely not mixed with animal by-products.

Answer 6

Sounds like you're a little bit too worried about contracting BSE. Honestly, there really is nothing a person can do. It's all in the hands of the meat inspectors and the meat packers as well as their stringent practices to make sure that meat does not get contaminated with BSE or that any animal suspected of having BSE does not get into any kind of food chain except for the microorganisms in the soil that decompose the dead animal.

The last time someone had CJD (a human form of BSE) was almost 30 years ago. Since then there has been careful practices to make sure that no meat gets contaminated with prions from the infected spinal cord and brains of the infected animal. The other thing that has been put out to the public is that you can't get CJD by eating the meat. It's only, again, if the meat has been contaminated or if the person was eating the brain and/or spinal cord of an infected animal (and anyone who's smart enough wouldn't do such a thing).

Besides, there hasn't been any reported cases in North America from people contacting CJD, and the way that the meat industry is operating since the break out of listeriosis a while ago, I doubt if anybody will get CJD. So it's really something you shouldn't worry about.