Did Meat Producers Spread Mad Cow Disease?

Now-banned meat-and-spinal chord mixture may be the culprit

Some clues are emerging as to how and why mad cow disease spread across Europe. The most likely avenue, the Independent of Britain says, is through a meat-and-spinal chord mixture called slurry, which was used as fill for hamburgers and sausages before it was banned in 1995.

Slurry, it reports, is made from meat stripped from butchered bones. Experts say the process of making the mixture might have torn off pieces of spinal cord, which would have been a way for bovine spongiform encephalopathy to enter meat. The spongiform subtance has long been believed to be the cause of mad cow disease.

Despite the fact that 5,000 tons of slurry was produced each year when it was legal, The Independent's survey of meat producers found only one company that admitted that it might have used the mixture in beef products. The survey includes responses from 75 percent of Britain's meat producers. The article notes that the reluctance of some meat producers to answer questions has hampered government efforts to investigate the fatal disease, which has killed more than 100 people.

MSNBC has a story that explains mad cow disease and how scientists think it works. USA TODAY outlines some of the steps Europe has taken to fight the outbreak.

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