this is from Organic Consumers Organization. aside from the coverups and our lousy testing standards, it now appears that mad cow disease can be contracted through blood products.
there are real reasons not to eat red meat, but if you do, please…eat only meat produced by organic producers who do not feed their animals contaminated feed. of course, this means never eating at fast food joints, most restaurants and school cafeterias.
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GLOBAL MAD COW BYTES

JAPAN: Japanese food safety regulators were shocked by a new Ministry of Agriculture study revealing that nearly half of Japanese confirmed mad cow cases would not have been discovered if the nation had been using U.S. testing techniques. Although the U.S. already has a shaky reputation internationally for its lax testing procedures for mad cow disease, consumers in Japan, formerly the largest overseas market for U.S. beef, were shocked to learn, that in 9 out of 20 cases, U.S. testing would have mistakenly allowed animals with the fatal brain-wasting disease to go to market.

U.S.: New evidence, obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, reveals yet another mad cow cover-up by the USDA. In this case, back in 2003, a cow with all of the symptoms of the fatal and contagious disease had brain samples tested, which mysteriously turned up negative. Newly uncovered USDA documents reveal that the agency knowingly tested the wrong part of the brain and made no efforts to do further testing.

UK: A select group of blood donors in the UK are being advised to get checked for vCJD, the human form of mad cow disease. Roughly one hundred donors gave blood to three people in 1993 and 1994. Those three people have since died of vCJD, and UK doctors say the chance the disease was transmitted via donated blood is quite high.

More Mad Cow Info: http://www.organicconsumers.org/madcow.htm