Fish Can Get Mad Cow Disease

Fish Can Get Mad Cow Disease and there are few illness that has more terrifying symptoms, or a more ghastly outcome, than variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease or vCJD, best known as mad cow disease.

Abnormal proteins called prions found in brain tissue of cows suffering from bovine spongiform encephalopathy or BSE can cause vCJD in humans who eat meat from the animals.

These mad cow disease causing prions can literally result in people losing their minds. These infectious particles can eat away at their brain, leaving tiny sponge like holes.  There is no treatment available and death always follows.

According to an article published in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease, government regulations are horrendously lackadaisical when it comes to testing for BSE in our food supply.

Many Baby Boomers have given up eating beef in hopes of protecting themselves from exposure to mad cows disease. But the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease suggests there may be another ticking time bomb source of vCJD and that my friends is “farmed fish.”

University of Kentucky neurologist Robert P. Friedland and colleagues wrote a paper entitled Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy and Aquaculture. In that paper, they point out that fish consumption is widely recommended because omega-3 fatty acids, which  are known to reduce the risks of cardiovascular and Alzheimer’s diseases (and auto immune diseases like Lupus).

Those same scientists have doubts that the health benefits of farmed fish outweigh more potentially deadly danger.

“We are concerned that consumption of farmed fish may provide a means of transmission of infectious prions from cows with bovine spongiform encephalopathy to humans, causing variant Creutzfeldt Jakob disease,” they stated.

Dr. Friedland and his team point out that farmed fish are fed byproducts rendered from cows. That is a totally unnatural source of food for fish. Except for piranhas.

Fish Can Get Mad Cow Disease and the risk of transmission of mad cow disease to humans who eat farmed fish might seem small because there are often barriers between species that help prevent infections. But, according to the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease article, there are several reasons to be concerned about fish spreading mad cow to humans.

1.  Fish could be carriers of the disease from being feed infected meat products, even though the fish themselves are not obviously infected or sick.

2.  It is possible that eating prion infected cow parts could result in fish experiencing pathological changes that permit the prion infection to be transmitted between the two species.

Based on these two possibilities, the scientists are calling for government regulators to ban feeding cow meat or bone meal to fish until this common practice can be shown to be safe.

“We have not proven that it’s possible for fish to transmit the disease to humans. Still, we believe that out of reasonable caution for public health, the practice of feeding rendered cows to fish should be prohibited. Fish do very well in the seas without eating cows,” Friedland stated.

“The fact that no cases of Creutzfeldt Jakob disease have been linked to eating farmed fish does not assure that feeding rendered cow parts to fish is safe.

The incubation period of these diseases may last for decades, which makes the association between feeding practices and infection difficult. Enhanced safeguards need to be put in place to protect the public,” Friedland stated.

Fish Can Get Mad Cow Disease and the big issue is what generation will it show up? Yours, mine or our grandchildren’s?