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Biotech Science

Safer Means Of Disposing Of Mad Cows 82

Posted by timothy from the mmmm-liquidy dept.
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."
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Safer Means Of Disposing Of Mad Cows More

Safer Means Of Disposing Of Mad Cows

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  • I think back in the day when the beef tallow was used in industry more, they used to use this to render out the fat.
    • 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.

  • Proofread, anyone? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by hankaholic ( 32239 ) on Tuesday January 13, 2004 @11:06PM (#7969648)
    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.

  • Let's see... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by ObviousGuy ( 578567 )
    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:Let's see... (Score:1, Flamebait)

      by Lord Kano ( 13027 )
      Or dump toxins into the water table by dousing the cows with Drano...

      If you'd read the fucking article, you'd see that their device is like a big pressure cooker. How is that going to contaminate groundwater?

      LK
      • their device is like a big pressure cooker. How is that going to contaminate groundwater?

        In two ways. First the chemicals have to be created, second the chemicals eventually have to be disposed of.

        Why not use enzymes [foodproductdesign.com] to break down the prion proteins? They are extracted from commercially grown tropical fruits (I think from parts of the fruit that aren't eaten anyway - such as pineapple and papaya rinds), and are already available in industrial quantities for use in such things as laundry and dish machin

  • Ew. (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 13, 2004 @11:13PM (#7969698)
    Hope the cows are already dead when they do this. Because if they weren't mad, they will be (albeit for a short time).

    ~~~

  • "Get... in.... mah... BELLY!"

  • This might be important... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by jakoz ( 696484 ) on Tuesday January 13, 2004 @11:18PM (#7969736)
    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.
    • 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.
    • If you want to keep yourself safe, go to a supermarket that keeps their place clean, get some london broil or whatever is on sale (but looks fresh), and have them grind it up for you. While chances are some other meat will be in the meat grinder, that meat too came from a single piece of meat, and chances are, they didn't grind any cows brain there at the store. You are MUCH safer that way from catching anything from beef than if you take pre-packaged ground and processed meat. Most supermarkets will do

  • Sodium hypochlorite would be safer (Score:4, Interesting)

    by dacarr ( 562277 ) on Tuesday January 13, 2004 @11:19PM (#7969749) Homepage Journal
    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.

    • the problem with sodium hydroxide (lye) is that it doesn't readily break down.

      Actually, the article states that they use potassium hydroxide in the apparatus.

      This solves much of the environmental problem you described.

    • Re:Sodium hypochlorite would be safer (Score:5, Informative)

      by fiori ( 45848 ) on Wednesday January 14, 2004 @12:12AM (#7970184) Homepage

      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.

      • This is all true, except I'd change "must be neutralized for disposal" to "should be neutralized for disposal." And I'm not quite sure what fiori means by "remaining organic material," since neither NaOH nor NaOCl nor the neutralization of them would (most likely) have to do with organic substances. Ideal worlds, nitpicky, blah blah.

        Moreover, the chlorine from the chlorine bleach is very, very bad for the environment, and is not nearly as easy to get rid of as other bases (like NaOH).

        One problem with Na

    • 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

      • How can the prion be heatproof? Surely there is _some_ temperature that will destroy it. You mean that it's resistant to high temperatures that would denature most other proteins. What matters is whether there is a temperature hot enough to destroy the prion but cold enough not to damage medical instruments.
  • I'd like to the reports of those generic "researchers" they reference that say by merely burning the deceased and diseased, more cattle can be at risk. Sounds incredulous to me.
    • This older page mentions the same thing: http://organicconsumers.org/madcow/disposal8101.cf m It, however, mentions, that it can be cheaper, so now I actually see a benefit.
      • Oh god, nevermind, I reread(now that i think about it, I probably skipped right over) the original and it mentions cost-effectiveness.
  • I just cleaned my drain.

    Now i am not endangered anymore from deadly prions from my drain !!
  • Am I the only person imagining massive vats of Dissolving Cow Soup, frothing mildly as more cows are poured in?
  • You'd be mad, too, if people thought you were food.

  • Send the cattle to Afghanistan! (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Brand the cattle, so everyone knows not to eat them, and let them wander around, slowly clearing the millions of landmines in the country.

    They'll make mincemeat out of the landmine problems!

    {groan}

  • Eating an infected cow (Score:3, Insightful)

    by phorm ( 591458 ) on Wednesday January 14, 2004 @01:55AM (#7970826) Journal
    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?
    • According to a recent article in this week's Newsweek, one reduces their risk of getting the disease by sticking to the muscle cuts. Steak is good. Stay away from brains, liver, tongue, etc.
    • Mad cow, or BSE, primarily infects the nervous system. This means that there is more of the disease found in the brain, the spine, and other sources of nerve tissue. In general, cuts of meat served as steak, roast, etc, have little nervous tissue, and are a very very low risk. Ground meats (as you can't always be sure of the contents) carry more of a risk, but eating the brain of an infected cow should carry the highest risk.
    • 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 i
      • the US uses mechanical picking devices to remove the last meat from the spine, rather than (prion dissolving) solvents used in other countries.

        Anyone know whether Canada uses solvent or mechanical (or both)?

        Also, at what temperature does the disease die? Enough to make your steak into a charcoal briquette? Will risk increase depending on how "rare" the meat is?

    • Re:Eating an infected cow (Score:5, Informative)

      by Oddly_Drac ( 625066 ) on Wednesday January 14, 2004 @09:52AM (#7972617)
      "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.

      • Do yopu have any links about Growth Hormone? Just curious
      • Try this google search site:cdc.gov prions. The first article that comes up

        http://www.cdc.gov/od/ohs/biosfty/bmbl4/bmbl4s7 d .h tm

        " Although there is no documentation of the transmission of prions to humans through droplets of blood or cerebrospinal fluid, or by exposure to intact skin, or gastric and mucous membranes, the risk of such occurrences is a possibility. Sterilization of the instruments and decontamination of the operating room should be performed in accordance with recommendations described bel
        • "Although there is no documentation of the transmission of prions to humans..."

          I'd have to go check to see if there's any body of research that deals with other animals, because prions aren't species specific, which is why we have BSE ('Mad Cow'), Scrapie (in sheep) and Cruetzfeld-Jakob disease in humans. It's notoriously suspicious to start using 'in humans' as a caveat.

          "This is why we don't take blood donations from people who spent time in England."

          Stronger wording than the actuality;

          "Because

    • Re:Eating an infected cow (Score:3, Informative)

      by bluGill ( 862 )

      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

      • "don't eat infected meat all togather"

        Good thing they label it, huh?

        "For that matter if it was very contagious I would expect more cows to have it."

        I'd repeat the crack I made above, but it wouldn't add anything. The main problem is testing for it. You have to look for;

        a) The cow having problems standing.
        b) A brain with a consistency of a sponge.

        Both of those are a tad too late to stamp down on the milk/blood vectors without twatting the bloodline, which is essentially what happens.

        "OTOH,

    • 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 s

  • this has been known for at least the past 100 years. On a regular basis I take advantage of this when I chemically process my hair.

    Sodium hyrdroxide, calcium hydroxide and lithium hydroxide are all very powerful bases. My question then becomes, what of all of the cow sludge that is left after you dissolve them in a big vat of lye or sodium hypochlorate?

    What is there to do? I haven't any idea.

    LK

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

      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.

      • 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

        • Sure. I also eat vegitables fertalized by human waste (not that I can tell), which grosses out most people, even though it has been a valuable technique for years in Asia.

          I know acids and bases make a salt when combined. Like I said, there are difficulties there. However they are not insurmountable if careful attention is paid to the details.

          • Sure. I also eat vegitables fertalized by human waste (not that I can tell), which grosses out most people, even though it has been a valuable technique for years in Asia.

            It's also done in Mexico, as evidenced by the recent hepatitis outbreak [courier-journal.com] that was linked to Chi Chi's.

            It just isn't smart to put human feces and urine on plants that you plan to eat. Sure, if you know 100% of the organic material is comeing from healthy people you have nothing to fear, but if one human pathogen is a part of the fertiliz
  • I can't help but think of the scene in Point of No Return where Harvey Keitel as Victor the Cleaner dispatches at least one person by stuffing him into a toilet and pouring in a few quarts of some strong chemcial.
  • Why don't we just continue and do what we do today, make hamburgers of 'em. ? ;)

  • From Saturday Night Live [fortunecity.com]

    Timmy: (in front of yard-a-pult loaded with dog-shaped black trash bag) "Daddy, where's sparky going?"
    Rick Moranis: "Sparky's going to heaven, Timmy." *pulls lever*
    (trash bag goes flying into neighbor's yard)
    • Prior art, so to speak: Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975) IMDB [imdb.com]

      Or, for the Slashdot crowd: this [geocities.co.jp], specifically here [geocities.co.jp] and here [geocities.co.jp].

      Very prophetic, in restrospect, so let the French have it ;)
      • so let the French have it

        Rather, I think the French let the English have it.

        "Fetchez la vache".
        "Quoi?"
        "Fetchez la vache!" *sproing* MOOOOOOooooosplat
        • I think the French let the English have it.

          Argh, yes, you are right! I guess I ridiculed myself in front of a large audience :(

          Lame excuse: I was running low on caffein
  • You know, the one that was supposed to take anything and turn it into oil?

    Seems to me that company should've stepped in to take over this problem - or maybe its the same people/research group?
  • We have ours in landfill at the present. Bit of a biohazard?
  • While the smell of 1000 burning cows might not be bad I don't wanna be around hundreds of liquefying bovines. I'll bet the stench would be utterly unbearable.

    What a mOOving sight tho!

    double rim shot. cymbal crash

    • The smell of burning cows is not nice at all... A few years ago in the UK we had mass culling of cows due to "Mad Cow" and they burnt 1000's of the dead carcases a few miles away from my home. You could smell the stench for miles around, 24 hours a day for a few weeks.

  • They did *what* with the carcasses? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Oddly_Drac ( 625066 ) on Wednesday January 14, 2004 @09:33AM (#7972428)
    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.

  • Using drain cleaner to dispose of potentially hazardous meat and bone is a method apparently pioneered by a Belgian dude named Andras Pandy [crimelibrary.com], who used it to dispose of several hundred pounds' worth of potentially hazardous proteins.

    Unfortunately, the proteins he needed to get rid of were formerly in the form of people. The hazard was getting caught, not getting sick, so YMMV.

    (I know the radical peta'ns might equate cow slaughter with serial murder, but as a serial hamburger killer myself, I can't make tha
  • I think we should catapult them over the walls at the stupid English k-nig-its.

  • New, Mad Cow strength draino!

    Mom: How will I ever get this prime rib out of my sink drain?
    Mad Cow: (Magically appears)
    Mad Cow: With new Mad Cow Strength Draino!, it's Craaaaazy Strong!
    Mom: Wow, thanks Mad Cow! Kisses cow on the cheek.
    (Falls over confulsing)
    (Cow flys off)
    (Fade out)
    (Cue Outback Commercial)

  • Drano, which contains lots of nifty sodium hydroxide, does a real number on aluminum cans. Did you know aluminum cans have a plastic liner inside them? I performed this neat "experiment" to find out for myself: (don't try this yourself):
    • Get a clean peanut butter jar large enough to contain a 12 oz aluminum soda can.
    • Poke a pencil-sized hole in the jar's lid.
    • Get a 12 oz soda can and scrape a good bit of the paint off the outside can.
    • GO OUTSIDE, WEARING PROTECTIVE GEAR.
    • Carefully mix up an horrendously stro
  • Let's get some hydrocarbons out of them old bovines! Check the .sig! If it'll work for turkey guts, it'll work for mad cows too!

  • I'd rather just pay a little bit extra (or maybe even a bit less, plus a smidge of extra effort) to buy meat from a ranch that takes good enough care of their cows that they don't get sick very often. A ranch like this is also more likely to notice if a cow does get sick, and take care of it.

    You can make this decision too: "I won't eat animals that were raised in a box." Your food comes from living things, have some respect for it.

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