A Canadian prion expert says that humans have nothing to be worried about when they eat farmed fish, contradicting a report published in mid-June in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Diseases. Neurologist Robert P. Friedland of the University of Louisville warned that farmed fish, eating byproducts rendered from cows and contaminated with the prions associated with Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy, may spread Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (CJD) in humans.
“It is a fish story,” says Neil Cashman, scientific director of PrioNet Canada. Cashman, Canada Research Chair in Neurodegeneration and Protein Misfolding Diseases at the University of British Columbia, says he has “worked in the prion field for 20 years” and fish do not contract the BSE prion.