I’d like to thank reader Susan Grady for requesting a response from the cattle industry regarding the loss of her family member to complications from Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease, or CJD (“Mad cow here?” Voice, Jan. 13).
Certainly, losing a loved one to a mysterious disease such as CJD is tragic enough without concerns that it might be linked to a food that is a staple in the American diet. But this information will reassure any readers who have seen Ms. Purves’ letter and become concerned about the safety of U.S. beef.
According to medical sources, CJD is a rare neurological disease that usually afflicts people over 50 years of age, with a median age of about 64. CJD was first diagnosed in the 1920s, and it occurs at a rate of about one person per million population each year worldwide, among meat eaters and vegetarians alike. According to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the incidence of CJD in the United States from 1974 through 1994 is stable and consistent with the incidence of this disease worldwide.
CJD is not related to any dietary habits or to the British cattle disease bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), but there is confusion with a newly discovered human neurological disease with a similar name–new variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (nvCJD). Ms. Purves is not the first to confuse the two diseases.
This new disease was first documented in England in 1995. Recent research has shown that the infectious agent that caused BSE in British cattle also causes nvCJD (results of a USDA surveillance program show there is no BSE in the U.S.). There seems to be a risk, although extremely low, that the BSE infectious agent can be transmitted to humans with certain genetic predispositions to this type of disease. To date, there have been 22 documented cases of nvCJD in the United Kingdom and one in France. According to the CDC, there have been no cases of nvCJD in the U.S.
