Safer Means Of Disposing Of Mad Cows

MissMarvel writes "A company claims to have a safer way to dispose of cows infected with Mad Cow Disease. It says that by using the kinds of chemicals that go into a drain-clearing product such as Drano, they can safely break down the suspected disease-causing proteins, known as prions. The bodies of infected dead cattle are usually burned to destroy proteins these brain-wasting compounds."

Comments

Proofread, anyone?

[hankaholic]

It's bad enough when the editor doesn't RTFA, but it's even worse when the post itself doesn't parse correctly.

The bodies of infected dead cattle are usually burned to destroy proteins these brain-wasting compounds.

Indeed.

Re:Proofread, anyone?

[LagDemon]

Yu know what's sad? I'm so used to grammar mistakes in posts, I didn't even notice that, even after I read you post and went back and rechecked it!

Let's see...

[ObviousGuy]

Release carcinogens into the air by burning the cows...

Or dump toxins into the water table by dousing the cows with Drano...

Which is safer again?

Re:Good write he is

[MachDelta]

What you say? Article man have good writing! He say fire make bad pro... proteen... protan... bad stuff go away! If bad stuff get into cow, then cow must be burn, or man get sick too. And if man get sick, man brain not well work. Then would who understand man?!

Ew.

[Anonymous Coward]

Hope the cows are already dead when they do this. Because if they weren't mad, they will be (albeit for a short time).

~~~

This might be important...

[jakoz]

This might be important, but the real issue is early detection of this desease, avoiding cross contamination, etc. If you want to be scared, trace the life of a cow once it leaves the farm, and play spot the faults at every step along the way. Trust me... it is very, very easy.

I've heard it said that one hamburger can contain parts from 1000 head of cattle. When youre talking those sorts of numbers, the potential for outbreak, both for this and other diseases, is huge.

Disposing of the bodies is one thing, but far more important is early detection and isolation.

Re:This might be important...

[ObviousGuy]

The other thing that's important to remember is that BSE is transmitted through consumption of contaminated neural and intestinal matter. No BSE has been traced to muscle meat.

So stay away from brraaaaiiiinnnsss and hotdogs and you'll be safe, for the time being.

Sodium hypochlorite would be safer

[dacarr]

While sound, the problem with sodium hydroxide (lye) is that it doesn't readily break down. It will definitely work on the proteins, but it won't readily break down before hitting water. So now you have all this toxic waste.

So why not a concentrated form of common household clorine bleach (sodium hypochlorite)? Yes, I know, it's toxic, but read on. Straight from the bottle, it dissolves hair in ten minutes, and will likewise break down other organic proteins. It's one of the ingredients in liquid drain opener products, in fact, along with lye. So in a concentrated form (remember, Clorox and its ilk is maybe 4% Na HypoCl), while it would produce fumes that would need to be contained, in the end the proteins could simply be flushed, and the bleach would eventually break down into salt water.

Re:Sodium hypochlorite would be safer

[fiori]

Nice try but wrong. Sodium hydroxide is a strong base and as such it will completely dissociate to water and the counter-ions when the solution is neutralized for disposal. All strongly acidic or basic waste must be neutralized for disposal. Once it is neutralized, the waste is only hazardous with respect to the remaining organic material.

The [balanced] reaction is:
NaOH + HCl ----> H2O + Na+ + Cl-

Sodium hypochlorite (NaOCl, also a strong base) has a lower pKa than sodium hydroxide and would require more to be as effective as the sodium hydroxide solution while still requiring the resulting solution to be neutralized.

Another consideration is how concentrated of a solution can be consituted. Higher concentrations allow for less solution to do more. Sodium hydroxide saturates around 11-12 mol/liter and potassium hydroxide saturates around 14 mol/liter.

Additionaly, once the base cleaves the peptide bond, the later neutralization of the solution will not reconstitute the peptide bond.

The crap in your drain is not bulk muscle, nerve, or bone tissue. Unless you are a serial killer. The strong caustic is necessary to effectively dissolve the infected tissue.

Eating an infected cow

[phorm]

My question - can you truely die in most circumstances from eating meat on an infected cow? I've heard arguements both ways... I would definately say you will stand a high chance of infection if you eat the brain matter - but what about well-cooked portions of the regular meat?

Is mad-cow a scare? The chances of eating a mad cow are extremely low. How about the chances of infection from eating various parts?

Can anyone clarify this further?

Re:Eating an infected cow

[wcdw]

Yes, it is possible to get the disease from eating "well-cooked portions of the regular meat". One of the problems is that the stun guns used in the industry have been known to blow brain matter well into the animal. If this gets on 'the regular meat', it's just as infected as eating the spinal cord.

Another problem is that the US uses mechanical picking devices to remove the last meat from the spine, rather than (prion dissolving) solvents used in other countries. The potential for contamination there is pretty evident, although mostly confined to 'speciality meats'.

Good cuts of steak are your best bet -- but are by no means a guarantee of anything.

Re:Eating an infected cow

[Oddly_Drac]

"can you truely die in most circumstances from eating meat on an infected cow?"

Depends whether you kill it first. Cows are terrible when pissed off.

The number of deaths from Cruetzfeld-Jacob disease in the UK remains low, even after some fancy footwork in terms of changing the goalposts with regard to the vector of the disease. BSE doesn't even begin to address the things that are coming across the tragically mythical 'species barrier'.

"I would definately say you will stand a high chance of infection if you eat the brain matter - but what about well-cooked portions of the regular meat?"

Prions are usually confined to the nervous system and brain, meaning that you should steer clear of those bits. There have been some notes of concern sounded by contamination of meat with spinal cord and brain matter, but the regs in the UK have been seriously 'beefed up'* since the great cull. Having said that, cross contamination is _going to happen_ in an abbatoir.

"but what about well-cooked portions of the regular meat?"

I _believe_ that prions survive the cooking process at roughly 200C, but you should check that with a more credible source than a poster on Slashdot. Cooking stuff well just tends to reduce the parasites that 'can' be in meat, although generally this is fairly rare.

"Is mad-cow a scare?"

Yes and no. It finally put the nail in the coffin of the really daft practice of feeding entrails to animals in the same and different species, and so far the risk factor _appears_ to be lower than bowel cancer, but it pays to be vigilant, especially if you have epidemeology (which isn't true in this case) or a multi-billion dollar industry connected with it.

Of course, US Beef doesn't enter the UK because of the vast amounts of 'safe' growth hormone pumped into it; that represents a bigger risk, IMO, that nobody has really gotten into.

* Yeah, I'm really, really sorry.

Re:Eating an infected cow

[bluGill]

Cronic Wasting Diese has been known about in Elk for 40 years, and so far no infections in humans have been reported. There is some evidence that Wolfs cannot get it, though I don't know if it is proven or just appears that way. Mad cow has existed for a while, and very few humans have been infected. Also very few animals have been infected in total. This is a very rare thing, unfortunatly we know almost nothing about how it works (Prions reproduce but don't otherwise fit even the limited definition of life that a virus does)

I suspect this has been around for years. OTOH, considering how rare it is I wouldn't be surprized if many people are somewhat imune to it. For that matter if it was very contagious I would expect more cows to have it.

So don't worry about it yet. Let researchers do their job of figguring out what is really going on and what the danger is. OTOH, Don't be stupid about it, that is don't go eating the brains of infected cows, for that matter, don't eat infected meat all togather.

Re:Eating an infected cow

[meridoc]

The big problem with prions (the things that cause mad cow disease (or bovine spongiform encephalopathy, BSE), as well as scrapie in sheep and some other diseases) is that there is no microorganism to blame, like a virus or bacteria.

Instead, prions are just mis-folded proteins. Take your normal protein, fold it wrong, and suddenly it acts funny because it can't do its normal job correctly. It also induces other proteins to fold incorrectly (that whole replication thing). Because this misfolding has to start somewhere, there are (very, very rare) cases of spontaneous Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (the human equivalent of mad cow disease).

Now, because the protein itself is technically correct, the body doesn't see anything wrong with it, so it doesn't kill it (like it would if it saw a mutated cell). This also means that cooking prions won't change anything.

Because a prion is a single incorrect protein, the transmission rate is really pretty low, especially between species. That is, eating a single wrong protein probably won't infect you. However, your hamburgers are probably a bit larger than single proteins.

There is no evidence of prions in muscle meat. The largest concentration of prions is in the brain/nervous system. Stay away from brains and ground meat (since you don't know exactly where the ground stuff comes from) and you're probably fine, even if the animal was infected.

Try this page for some info, slightly technical, from the UK.

Try this page from NOVA

Good, simple info from NIH

Um actually Re:Sodium hypochlorite would be safer

[WolfWithoutAClause]

IRC the mad cow disease prion is proof against:

• boiling
• heat treatment
• burning
• bleach
• radiation
• burying in soil for more than a year

It's not that these things don't degrade the prion- they all do, and reduce the infectivity, but it's just that in order for it not to be infectious, you have to get every last molecule, and most of them leave some behind. Last time I heard I think the approved technique to decontaminate a medical instrument was triple autoclave or something, but it wasn't guaranteed, and in most cases disposal was the prefered option; but that was some time ago, I'm not up on the current protocols.

Re:I think this is old tech.

[TexNex]

I don't know about that but, wouldn't it be eaiser (and more useful) to just take the mad cows to the tyson chicken plant (the one that is turning chicken parts into oil) and toss the cows in the grinder?! If the product is fuel oil then there's nothing to lose.

They did *what* with the carcasses?

[Oddly_Drac]

Can someone confirm that the 400 cows slaughtered last week weren't actually buried according to news reports?

'cos if they had, you have a time bomb on your hands before the prions eventually reach the water-table, not to mention the long way up the food chain.

You have to incinerate the carcasses.

Re:Powerful bases can break down proteins

[Lord Kano]

Fertilizer. Once it is harmless, neutralize the base, and compost it. In a few months spread it on a field and improve the soil.

Are YOU going to want to eat something grown in Mad Cow fertilizer? I sure as hell won't.

I'm not willing to bank on no rogue prions having survived the processing.

Note, what and how to neutralize a base needs to be carefull understood. The technology is easy enough (just pour in some acid), but doing it safely (for workers), and safely (so the byproducts don't render the soil unable to grow plants) is something that needs to be planed for in advance.

If you neutralize a base with acid, you get salt. You can't fertilize anything with salt.