MANAGING RISK
Remember reading in the newspaper about the lamb discovered with brain wasting disease. You don’t? Well, join the club because there were no news reports of that case or the 350 other cases reported in 2003 in the U.S.. The disease, called scrapie, is targeted for elimination by the year 2017 through breeding practices intended to promote sheep resistant to the disease. Few lamb eaters have ever heard of the disease.
Did you ever consider canceling a trip to Hawaii because of fear from dying from a coconut falling on your head? If so, you avoided joining the 400 unfortunates who took the risk and are no longer with us.
RISK AND ODDS FOR ONE YEAR
HEART DISEASE 1:400
FOOD POISONING 1:50,000
BICYCLE ACCIDENT 1:400,000
LIGHTNING 1: 5,000,000
ANTHRAX ATTACK 1:50,000,000
Oprah Winfrey’s guest, vegetarian Howard Lyman, assured viewers to soon expect millions of mad cows in this country and thousands of human deaths from new variant CJD. The solution was swearing off beef. In England where 200,000 cows went mad, and people delighted in eating brains and eggs, 136 people died in the past 20 years.
Germany announced recently that 510 cows, failed to be tested as required by law. These cattle moved into the food chain. Germany has reported 53 cases of mad cow during 2003 and each discovery rarely rates a news headline.
A recent study cites high toxin levels in farmed salmon. Farm-raised salmon, a growing staple of American diets, contains significantly higher concentrations of PCBs, dioxin and other cancer-causing contaminants than salmon caught in the wild, and should be eaten infrequently, according to a new study of commercial fish sold in North America, South America and Europe.
Any deaths from any causes are always sad and to the extent we can prevent, our duty is to do so. Mad cows in the U.S., even if more than one are found, do not present the type risk that should weigh on the human mind. American beef continues to be the safest beef supply in the world.