Extracts From Cattle

[Guest guest]

herbal and nutritional supplements contain extracts from cattle that

have the potential to be contaminated with the agent that causes mad cow

disease and is believed to also cause Creutzfeldt-Jakob (CJD) disease in

humans. The risk is very low, but the U.S. Food and Drug Administration

(FDA) has expressed safety concerns to manufacturers and importers of

supplements.

The Orange County Register explains that tissues or extracts from the

brains and spinal cords of cattle have the highest risk for transmitting

the prion believed to cause CJD. The article also ranks other cattle

tissues into medium- and low-risk categories.

In 1994, Congress revoked most of FDA's authority to regulate vitamins

and dietary supplements. That means manufacturers don't need to test

most products for safety. This puts the burden on consumers, who should

read labels carefully to spot ingredients derived from animal sources.

Supplement makers, however, sometimes list only a generic ingredient

such as " animal protein " without specifying whether cattle were used or

the country of origin for ingredients.

The United Kingdom accounts for nearly all of the human deaths linked to

contaminated cattle. Last year, however, the World Health Organization

warned that contaminated cattle or cattle products could start spreading

beyond western Europe, the CBC New

 

Pearly