Cow Blood
Cow Blood - Useful Or Harmful?
Almost every part of a slaughtered cow, including the cow blood, is put to use for one purpose or another. It wasn't always this way. When you remove the choice cuts of meat, and the other meat that can be used, plus the hide, there is still plenty of cow left. Given the numbers of cows slaughtered annually, what was usually left over would be enough to fill all of our commercial landfills in a short time.
Over the years, uses have been found for the various parts of the cow we don't actually eat, right down to the eyeballs. Products used every day in industry, or in our homes, come from cow blood, glycerin and tallow, and fatty acids, plus organs and glands normally not used as food products. If "Waste Not Want Not" has ever been an appropriate saying, it's been so with our use of the parts of the cow. Beef is of course subject to inspection when sold commercially. The same is the case for certain other parts of the cow, which are used in products we may take internally, such as pharmaceuticals.
A cow is, like any other mammal, subject to disease. Most of these diseases are not particularly contagious, and even if so, are normally not passed on to human beings, even if we eat the meat. Foot-and-mouth disease for example, is extremely contagious among cattle, but humans are rarely infected. Mad Cow disease on the other hand, is not particularly contagious, but so far has no known cure, and always kills the animal, or human, that contracts it.
The extent to which cow blood, and you would have to include meat, could present a danger to us, is really quite up in the air. The parts of the cow most affected by Mad Cow disease, bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), are its brain and spinal cord. Other organs are infected to a lesser extent. One must assume however, that if any major organ is infected, blood may also be a potential source of infection. Besides being present in the meat we eat, cow blood is present in milk (in minute amounts), in pet foods, and in bone and blood meal fertilizers used in our flower and vegetable gardens. Cow parts, when ground up are often used to add nutrients to the food fed back to the cows themselves.
It is a small wonder then, that a single incident of Mad Cow disease can create a very large uproar, as the parts of a single cow, once processed, and used in a variety of products, can be spread over a huge area. Many of the products in which cow blood will be found pose no particular danger. The blood is used in plywood adhesives, fire extinguisher foam, and in dyes. Organs we don't normally eat find their way into pet food, cleaning agents, and some pharmaceuticals.
All this doesn't mean that you should stop drinking milk, stop eating beef, and avoid any product thought to have cow blood as a component. Some may suggest this, but a more sensible approach might just be to be aware and keep informed.