Here are the Rules!

[cowman]

Linda: Of course there are greater risks out there. But one simple test eliminates this risk.
Have you ever ate SRMs? No? Are you sure? Have you ever been in a beef deboning plant? A lot of crap can end up in the meat including tiny parts of the spinal cord. At least thats how it was twenty five years ago!

[cakadu]

Cowman - I am reasonably certain that I haven't eaten SRM - as I have been told I am a finicky eater.

Except for one oversight in my youth - I ate rumaki - chicken liver wrapped in bacon and my mom was from the school of you take it you eat it - I have not knowingly ate anything remotely connected to the SRM's. I do not eat organ meats, head cheese, prairie oysters, tripe, or anything like that and never will.

I dispise it when I bite into meat and a "big old vein" comes snapping back at me.

I just don't see how we can avoid the risk entirely except to become vegetarians and even that didn't help those 2 in the U.K. To be perfectly honest - I am far more worried about food and water borne pathogens such as listeria, salmonella, e-coli and campylobacter than I am about BSE, unless and until they make a definitive link to the muscle cuts.

I also think that it has to be left up to the individual to choose based on sound information. Some people will not want to take any risk at all and perhaps eat meat that comes from non-ruminant species. Some will figure that if it's your time to go - it's your time and the rest will fit somewhere in between.

[cowman]

Well ever had a burger at MacDonalds or Wendys? But whatever, you are right, we do what we can and it does no good to be overly paranoid. You live the life of a puritan and then a damned truck runs over you, while the old drunken rake down the street dies at 90 in his comfy bed! That is life.

[ValueChainFX]

A MDM machine (mechanical Boning Machine) is typically used to pressure remove meat from neck and back bones! The end resulting product looks like red mush and is called "Badder Material" it is usually very high in calcium (due to the separation process)the processors allow 10% of this material to go into a batch of ground beef! So does the backbone and neck bones carry the SRM materials?

[cakadu]

Well cowman, if I wanted to, I suppose that I could become overly paranoid about what I am eating (I rarely eat at either of those places that you mentioned) and the bonus would be I could maybe loose those nasty 5 lbs that have been plaguing me.

On the other hand, I could be food safety conscious and do the best that I can. I'm not going to loose sleep over it because it won't do any good anyway. About the best I can do is continue to monitor on a case by case basis and become as informed as I am able to.

[cowman]

Well Value chain, times have changed since my days in the beef business! In those days they used a wizard knife to clean the neck. Never seen those mechanical units. But I think you know that if the splitter screwed up a bit the whole spinal cord could have been in the neck?
Actually the spinal cords on all the cattle were saved and shipped to Jamaica. I wonder if we have a lot of dementia in Jamaica? Or is it hard to tell because of all the high grade ganja down there??? LOL

[boone]

cakadu,cowman did either of you read the article in Globe and Mail today by Andrew Nikiforuk, if you can't find it on main page search CJD