On Food and Cooking

diseased cattle have turned up elsewhere in
Europe, as well as in the United States,
Canada, and Japan. As a precautionary
measure, a number of countries have
suspended some traditional practices at least
temporarily. These include eating flavorful
meat from older animals (which are more
likely to carry BSE), as well as beef brains,
sweetbreads and spleen (immune-system
organs), and intestines (which contain
immune-system tissues). Some countries also
forbid the use of “mechanically recovered
meat” — tiny scraps removed from the
skeleton by machine and incorporated into
ground beef — from the head and spinal
column. These rules will probably be
modified as rapid tests for the animal disease
are developed and implemented, and as we
learn more about how it is transmitted to
people.
To date, the known human death toll from
BSE-infected beef numbers in the low