NECESSARY BUT INEFFECTUAL


The government's ban on downer cows, cows unable to stand properly is necessary since it eliminates animals showing signs of the disease but ineffectual, since the incubation period for the disease is so long that a cow can be infected for months before showing any symptoms. In humans it is even harder to detect an outbreak since the incubation period is more than 25 years.

Luckily the disease is not contagious between humans or even cows unless you're a cannibal. Unfortunately cows are unwilling cannibals since farmers routinely feed their animals feed which contains ground up beef products. Luckily again, the prions which transmit the disease seem to confine themselves to brain and spinal tissue.

On the negative side however is the fact that no one knows what goes into the making of beef stock, or sausage, or even most ground beef for that matter. With an incubation period of 25 years it is practically impossible to trace the source of an outbreak.

Even worse is the fact that these prions are not really life forms at all, they're more like molecules than even viruses, more like protein chemicals than life forms, so boiling or even irradiating the meat is unlikely to kill them