6-22 FB Mad Cow Feedback

 It is hard for me to determine what is a hotter topic as measured by the amount of e-mail that I receive. Do a story on equine slaughterhouses and the roof gets raised. Now, with mad cow being detected in domestic cattle herds, everybody has an opinion. I’ll share one with you in a minute.

 Obviously a hot topic surrounded the recent discoveries of some form of mad cow disease in California herds. Needless to say I went to the expert who in this case is Dr. Bill Barton, head veterinarian for the state of Idaho. Dr. Barton was comforting in noting that mad cow was a prion based disease that could only be transmitted by ingesting brain or spinal tissue from an infected animal. The e-mails have come in, and believe me. Here is just one:Dr, Sparks - Just a reminder that the most recent case of mad cow was atypical bovine amyloidotic spongiform encephalopathy which is a different strain of mad cow disease than classic BSE.   Three out of four US mad cows had this atypical BSE strain (primarily found in old dairy cows which are the source of US hamburger . . . )   You might want to pass this information to Dr. Barton who is disseminating incorrect information about "brain matter" being the only risk from mad cow disease. Thank you to our e-mailer who included a considerable number of scientific articles. Upon reading them, and with no disrespect intended, I’m reticent to call Dr. Barton uninformed.