Mad Cow Disease

I was teaching a class on evaluating research sources on the internet and so I found two documents on Mad Cow Disease online for my students to evaluate. One was supposed to be more reliable than the other, so that they could see the difference. One was from a website called mad-cow-facts and the other was an editorial in the Washington Times. I skimmed them briefly and thought I knew what each was about before going into class to teach with them.

While everyone was reading the articles (college students are woefully slow at reading) I read them completely too. It turns out that the editorial was way more informative than the mad-cow-facts website, which is the product of a conservative think-tank called the Hudson Institute, which receives funding from a number of agricultural groups/companies. Although they claim that they are not influenced by the sources of their funding, one can only wonder.

What startled me the most was the statistics in the editorial about the percentage of "downers" (cows that can't walk because they're too sick) that get tested for mad cow disease in various countries. In the US, less than 2% of downers have been tested prior to 2003 and after that, only 10%. Japan tests 100% of the cows going to market for food, and Europe tests 25% of them. We only look at 10% of the sick cows. . .yet the disease can be found in apparently healthy cows as well. . .

Not that I'm saying we should all stop eating cows, but I was surprised by what I didn't know about mad cow disease. And beyond that, I was impressed that I'd done such a good job of choosing two sources that were so disparate in their usefulness as research sources. . .I'm a genius after all!