Offal, Processing are Likely Culprits in BSE

Q:  I have heavy menstrual periods and a history of anemia. My doctor prescribed iron, but it bothered my stomach and made me constipated, so he said I should just make sure to get enough red meat in my diet. Otherwise, I wouldn't eat much meat - it's just not one of my favorite things. Now I'm thinking I'd rather avoid beef because of mad cow disease. Should I stop eating beef?

A:  For this question, I asked G. Richard Olds, MD, Professor and Chairman of Medicine at the Medical College of Wisconsin and a specialist in exotic infectious diseases, including those caused by prions - the causative agent in "mad cow disease," or bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE). He doesn't think you need to avoid beef, particularly with your need for dietary iron.

Dr. Olds says the two real issues of mad cow disease are meatpacking practices and beef "offal." Beef offal is cow brains, eyeballs, intestines, spleen, tonsils and lymph nodes. It is believed that the infectious prion of mad cow disease lives in brains and neurological tissue and that mad cow disease is spread to humans and other cows after consuming infected brains and neurological parts (e.g., beef offal).

In the US, offal is used as a binder in some fast food hamburgers and is contained in some sausages and hot dogs. (On a side note, Olds recalls that Oprah Winfrey featured this fact on one of her shows in 1998. In response, the beef industry sued Winfrey for "damaging statements" but lost the suit.)

Since the discovery of mad cow disease the US, the American beef industry has improved its handling of suspicious cows, but according to Dr. Olds, it still needs to adopt stricter rules on how cattle are slaughtered and meat is processed, and they need to ban offal from all human foods. These kinds of policies have been enacted in England and all of Europe.

Dr. Olds says that he has not stopped eating beef: "I continue to eat steak and continue to make hamburgers at home from ground beef I buy at the store, but I usually order a chicken sandwich at a fast food restaurant."

Dr. Olds predicts that if the beef industry doesn't do something soon, we will start to see "offal free" labeling on certain products and at specific fast food franchises. This will help make decisions when choosing to eat beef.

Julie L. Mitchell, MD, MS, is an Assistant Professor of Medicine at the Medical College of Wisconsin. She practices internal medicine at the Froedtert & Medical College General Internal Medicine Clinic - East. Her column appears in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel.

For more information on this topic, see the HealthLink article Putting Mad Cow Disease Into Perspective: A Top Ten List of Things to Really Worry About.