"Janet Baraclough.." wrote in message
...
The message
from (paghat) contains these words:

In article , George
Orwell
wrote:

Does anyone know of any research that has been done on the potential
for
contracting mad cow disease from using bone meal or blood meal as a
soil
amendment for veggies or herbs. That is, assuming no direct contact
with
the stuff.

Four cases in Great Britain were not traceable to any meat eaten, but
all
four were inveterate gardeners who used bonemeal.

Some of the victims were vegetarians. I have not heard that all the
vegetarians were inveterate gardeners who used bonemeal.

The majority
of Britain's human cases ate at MacDonalds -- MacDonalds was the sole
source of the contaminated meat! --

Er, for the benefit of others who may not know..Paghat is joking. No
single source of infected meat was identifiable.

but four victims were evidently
exposed only to bone meal fertilizers.

That theory has not been publicised in Britain afaik, so could you
provide a source for it please?

Janet.

The most recent [ West of England Medical School-pub. May2004] research
suggests that eating meat might very well have little or no relevance~~ the
prion being capable of withstanding autoclaving of instruments.
The work has shown that removed tonsils and appendixes from healthy
patients show a significant [but small] proportion having the prion. The
proportion, when extrapolated, means there are several thousand carriers of
vCJD who could have contaminated others, or been contaminated, via contact
with affected, but supposedly sterilised, instruments. It is not known if
these will eventually succumb to vCJD or even if this is 100% related to
BSE.

I suppose I should take precautions when using bone meal but I'm always
too busy to bother.
Others suggest that if I did get 'mad cow disease' they would notice little
difference~~and they are my friends!!
Brian.