The Frontal Cortex

This is very interesting. My husband is an industrial hygeneist and spends much of his day interested in these types of problems. He suggested that it could be the forced air which is contaminated - some kind grease, expellant or solvent leaking into the air compressor which could cause CNS effects like this.

After reading this, I immediately thought of prions. Scientists are only beginning to understand how prion diseases occur, and it is quite possible that other diseases we don't understand could be caused by consuming prions. Take Alzheimers for example. I don't doubt that Alzheimers exists as its own disease, but consider for a moment that we readily diagnose people with Alzheimers but rarely do autopsies. Then consider that Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease presents many similar symptoms to Alzheimers. When you start reading about why a CJD diagnosis would be made versus Alzheimers or dementia, you find out that CJD diagnosis' are only made in countries with a history of mad cow. Yet the FDA tests a very, very small portion of our cattle, so it is possible that mad cow is more prevalent than our meat suppliers would like us to believe. Take all of that together and you start wondering if some of the Alzheimer's diagnosis' could in fact be improperly diagnosed prion diseases. These peripheral nervous system symptoms don't match up with any prion disease that I've heard of, but it does make me wonder how little we know about it all.

I know this all sounds conspiracy-ish, but it's yet one more reason I won't eat beef and avoid all factory farmed meat.

Posted by: Rachael | February 4, 2008 10:50 AM

Yet another reason to avoid factory farms.

Or, if you really want to be safe, another reason not to put pieces of other animals into your body at all.

Posted by: Epistaxis | February 4, 2008 11:30 AM

Their working hypothesis is that the harvesting technique -- known as "blowing brains" on the floor -- produces aerosols of brain matter. Once inhaled, the material prompts the immune system to produce antibodies that attack the pig brain compounds, but apparently also attack the body's own nerve tissue because it is so similar.

Thanks for the heads up! At first reading the post I was thinking maybe mad cow? I also know that wild boar hunters are warned that when they first open up a hog to field dress it that they need to hold their breath since there is some bacterial or viral contaminant they can catch when the abdomen is first opened.
The above hypothesis sounds feasible since pigs must be genetically close to humans, their parts are used in us medically. I wonder if they will come up with some way to remove the aerosols from the humans to see if that does it?
Dave Briggs :~)

Posted by: Dave Briggs | February 4, 2008 4:29 PM

Locus,

Woops, I meant the USDA. I was in a rush when I typed my comment...

>They prohibited the use of Specified Risk Materials (mostly nervous tissue most likely to contain prions), banned certain animal proteins from cattle feed, and required recordkeeping/traceback systems to beef production.

What disturbs me about this attitude is that it requires a great deal of confidence in our scientific knowledge of prions - ie, we're assuming that by eliminating the "riskiest" tissues we are eliminating the problem. Banning "certain animal proteins" and the like are all great steps to be taking - but what would really ensure that our food supply is safe would be routine testing of all cattle, something that the USDA (*cough* lobbyist organizations) is vehemently opposed to.

Note that in the US we readily diagnose "spontaneous" CJD but rarely diagnoses "variant" CJD (variant CJD is attributed to eating BSE infected meat, while spontaneous is, uh somehow, spontaneous).

Here's another aspect of all of this to consider: you can't feed cows to cows, but you can feed cows to pigs and then feed pigs to cows. How's that for food safety logic?

>More disturbing are the efforts to block small producers from testing all their cattle and making BSE-free claims.

I assume you're referencing Creekstone farms here. The USDA appeal in 2007 disgusts me. Whose interests are they serving? Ugh.

Anyway, I very much agree. In my mind, everything that is wrong with factory farming boils down to the fact that small producers simply cannot compete. Whether they're trying to improve animal welfare or food safety, big beef has interest in suppressing the ability of small producers to provide consumers with choice. Given a true choice (and transparency in farming practices), I think many consumers would choose to pay a higher price for healthier, safer and more humanely raised meat. But because most beef arrives in nicely packaged plastic containers with practically no identity other than the cut, consumers perceive all beef to be the same. Factory farming aims to reduce consumer choice.

The person who owned the building that my husband works in actually died from variant CJD several years back. He lived his whole life in the US, ate every single meal in the US... except for one dinner, one piece of beef that he ate while in Italy at his daughter's wedding. He died from CJD and the official ruling stated that he contracted it from that single piece of beef in Italy. I mean, really, what are the odds?

Posted by: Rachael | February 5, 2008 10:32 AM