AR-News: (FR/US) Malformed Proteins Found in Sheep Muscle

[Animalconcerns]

Prions, the misfolded proteins that are widely believed to cause
brain-wasting diseases, have been found in sheep muscle, scientists
announced yesterday - the first time they have been discovered in animal
flesh that many humans normally eat.

But the scientists emphasized that the finding did not mean that lamb or
mutton posed a danger to humans. 
...
The prions were found at one five-thousandth the concentrations that are
found in sheep brains, and therefore likely to be much less infectious.

Also, the animals were infected with scrapie, a prion disease that is not
the same as bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or mad cow disease. Although
the symptoms of scrapie have been described in sheep for centuries, and
scientists believe that mutated scrapie prions may have caused the British
epidemic of mad cow disease of the 1980's, no case of scrapie transmitted
to humans has ever been found. 
...
He ventured a prediction: "Within the next year, somebody will make a big
splash by finding it in the muscles of cattle," he said, "and the beef
industry will go crazy."

Nonetheless, he said it was still his instinct that beefsteak had not been
the culprit in transmitting mad cow disease from cattle to humans in Europe.

"Mechanically recovered" meat, which is squeezed off chopped-up bones
under pressure, a process that in many cases mixes in spinal cord and
nerve tissue, was a "much better vehicle," he said. Late last year, spinal
cord and nerve tissue from cows over 30 months old was banned from human food.

full story:
http://www.wilmingtonstar.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20040524/ZNYT04/405240357/1004/LOCAL

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