Can people get Mad Cow Disease?
A. Humans can contract a TSE from eating certain kinds of meat from cattle infected with BSE. This human form of the disease is known as variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD). 146 people in Britain have been infected with vCJD from contaminated beef.[iv] Tissue from the infected cow’s central nervous system (including brain or spinal cord) is the most infectious part of a cow; such tissue may be found in some hot dogs, taco fillings, bologna and other products made fromground or chopped meat, due to contamination during the extraction of the last bits of meat from cow carcasses.[v] Transmission of vCJD has also occurred in over two dozen cases as a result of transplants or injections of body tissue from infected people. Q. Have people in the US contracted vCJD from eating infected beef? A. So far, none of the CJD cases diagnosed in the US have been linked to US-produced beef, but this fact may have little bearing on the reality of the situation: the disease has a long incubation per
