When I stroll along the meat department in the grocery store, I cannot help thinking of stuff in the meat, I mean besides usual protein and fat. You see, I have more than enough knowledge about how these chunks of meat are made from, and I have a kid to worry about.

The beef in the US is cheap, comparatively speaking. But you may wonder how on earth there are so many beef around. Cows, bulls, oxen, and all sorts of bovine animals grow slowly. It takes years for a baby bull to become an economically edible meat source. You need something to push it, to stimulate its growth.

In the US, more than three quarters of beef are harvested from hormone treated cattle. FDA argues that the residual hormone won’t affect humans because it will be destroyed during cooking and in our digestive canals. But the hormone is there and the health risks, according to an EU report, include several types of cancers. Because of this concern, the EU banned importing American beef (the US and Canada) into the EU member countries which results about $500 million lost annually for the US beef industry. It’s a beef war between the EU and the North America.

Sadly, I am not living in the EU, and also because I am relatively poor, I cannot afford the organic beef or hormone free beef. The only protection I can employ is to thoroughly cook the beef, and hopefully the hormone will be destroyed.

Luckily, as a Chinese, I eat more pork than beef. Is pork safer than beef? Unfortunately, the answer is no. Pigs are treated by variety of stuff including hormone too. I once had a neighbor who majored in animal nutrition. He told me that on average it only takes three month to grow a pig. That’s why pork is cheaper than beef.

Unlike pork and beef which are infamous red meats, poultry is a healthy white meat. The good news is that hormone is not allowed in growing chicks. But hold on, there is another problem with chicks. Antibiotics are used extensively in chicks. Whenever there is a sick chick in the farm (and there is always one sick chick year round), the whole batch of chicks will be given antibiotics for prophylactic purpose. Recently the FDA banned enrofloxacin for use in poultry because the drug, owing to its similarity with ciprofloxacin, has caused a surge of cipro resistant bacteria such as Campylobacter jejuni.

Antibiotics are used in almost all animal cultivation. Because we humans share quite a lot of bacteria with our beloved domestic animals, the drug resistance problem is inevitable if antibiotics are used in animals liberally. Regulatory agencies should do more than they current do.

Hormones, antibiotics, and other food additives are not life threatening at least. There is a secretive microbe lurking in the beef. If unlucky, your brain will look like a sponge, and you will die like a dumb. Even worse, you never know when and where you get it, and when the disease will fire up.

Yes, it is the prion disease, the mad cow disease. However, it is not a new disease. I remember that when I took the neurology course many years ago, we had a small paragraph on this disease. Then it is called kuru disease. The disease is impressive because it is caused by people eat their dead relatives, in particular the brains. It sounds scary but in Papua New Guinea, this is the way how some tribes pay their tribune to the dead. They believe that by eating the dead body, the dead people will live with you forever.

The prion in kuru disease transmits directly from person to person in that unusual way. But the cattle get the prion because of the modern feeding practice. Cattle farmers feed their cattle with animal meats including bone powder. Cows and bulls are vegetarians, but the pure animal proteins help them grow faster. This is the trouble. It helps spread prion too.

We all remember that British government had to slaughter millions of cattle in the peak of mad cow disease panic. The whole world banned the importation of British beef. The disease is so furtive, devastating, and incurable that a lot of people start refusing to eat any beef.

The prion is an evolutionary masterpiece. It is a protein but has two forms. In the prion form, the protein can “attack” the normal protein and induce it to refold as the prion form. Because, this is critical, almost all animals have gene to encode this particular norm protein, cells then keep producing the protein. Unfortunately, they may be all converted into prions. The prion protein is resistant to heat, chemicals, and radiation. It is relatively indestructible. Cells will bust because of excessive protein accumulation and then leave holes in the brain, thus resembling a sponge like brain. Luckily, most animal prions won’t cross the border into our humans. But sadly, sometimes some prions do.

There are in fact a lot of diseases caused by prion like proteins. Some forms of dementia and insomnia may be caused by prions. The gene that generates prions may exist in many people.

No food is safe. Even organic foods which claim no antibiotics and hormones may harbor lots of microbes unknown to anybody. The only protection I can foresee is to cook thoroughly, and more thoroughly. It is a scary world after all.