• Question: What can you do to stop getting mad cows disease

    Asked by anon-188134 to Warren, Shanti, Pizza Ka Yee, Nadine, Alex on 14 Nov 2018.
    • Photo: Nadine Mirza

      Nadine Mirza answered on 14 Nov 2018:

      To prevent Mad Cow’s Disease or Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, the NHS has done a good job of summarising key prevention techniques, which is mostly stuff the medical system can do being careful about not contaminating blood for transfusions, sterilisation of equipment. There were also stricter rules imposed on the meat industry: https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/creutzfeldt-jakob-disease-cjd/prevention/
      Unfortunately, there’s not much we as individuals can do to prevent ourselves getting it. We can only be careful about where we are getting our meat and food from and insist all places hold the necessary standards to keep us safe.

    • Photo: Alex Reid

      Alex Reid answered on 14 Nov 2018:

      Hi Nadine’s answer to this is good. Mad Cow Disease (Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease) is spread to humans primarily through contaminated meat. The disease is spread by prions, a weird self replicating protein that leads to neurodegeneration (brain decay). Although it is very serious and fatal, I also don’t think it is something you should be too worried about. It only affects one or two people per million in the UK per year. If you are really worried you could always avoid eating cow meat.

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