Prevention and Safeguard Measures For Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy

Prevention and Safeguard Measures For Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE). Abstract Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE), commonly referred to as mad cow disease, is a disease that damages the central nervous system and results to death. This disease is caused by abnormal proteins, or prions, and directly kills nervous tissues, thus is directly linked to the spinal cord and brain. The United States Department of Agriculture and the United States Food and Drug Administrations have set safeguards and firewalls to prevent BSE-contaminated beef from entering into the human food supply. Human consumption of BSE- contaminated beef results to variant Creutzfedt-Jakob disease (vCJD), which is also fatal. So far, there are no cures for BSE, or for vCJD, but only treatments to help stabilize the symptoms of the disease as the disease progresses. Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE), also known as mad cow disease, is a slowly progressive, degenerative, fatal disease that damages the central nervous system of adult cattle. It is universally accepted among the scientific community that the cause of BSE is from infectious forms of prions, which is a type of protein that is found in animals and is a type of transmissible spongiform encephalopathy (TSE). The exact cause of BSE is not known. In cattle that have BSE, these abnormal prions initially occur in the small intestines and tonsils, and are found in the brain, spinal cord, and other nervous tissues of animals in later stages of this disease (USFDA/CFSAN, 2005). These abnormal prions trigger chain reactions through all the other proteins in the brain and cause those proteins to change into the abnormal prions, thus damaging the brain and the result is death (Massachusetts Dep... ...h. July 20, 2005: www.mass.gov/dph/cdc/factsheets/madcow.htm Spengler, R. (2004, February). Mad Cow Disease. Yahoo Health. July 20, 2005: www.health.yahoo.com/ency/healthwise/tu6533 United States Food and Drug Administration. (2004, May). Agencies Work to Corral Mad Cow Disease. U. S. Food and Drug Administration. July 20, 2005: www.fda.gov/fdac/features/2004/304_cow.html United States Food and Drug Administration. (2004, July). BSE Interim Final Rule and Proposed Rule. U.S. Food and Drug Administration. July 20, 2005: www.cfsan.fda.gov/~comm/bsefact2.html United States Food and Drug Administration. (2005, June). Commonly Asked Questions Prevention and Safeguard Measures for BSE 7 About BSE in Products Regulated by FDA’s Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition (CFSAN). U.S. Food and Drug Administration. July 20, 2005: www.cfsan.fda.gov/~comm/bsefaq.html