BSE not linked to farmed fish

Tuesday, August 4, 2009

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.

"You can feed them until the cows come home."

Fish could be contagious, he allows, if they had consumed BSE-infected material and someone ate the intestines before the material was digested. "Typically, we don't eat the intestines of fish. The idea is far fetched."

On its own, CJD in general, not the new variant caused by eating BSE-infected food, affects more people than generally acknowledged – one in 10,000 over a lifetime, or one per million people per year.

Cashman says that, despite claims that CJD is more common in Kentucky than elsewhere, this is not the case. And it is not due to the consumption of squirrel brains, a favourite local treat.