It's only communicable from NEURAL TISSUE.. so unless you're eating an infected cow's brain.. you're probably okay.
Wel.. as long as we're reading up on it, it is also communicatable by spinal tissue (which is really neural tissue, I know). Not a big deal for most people as spinal tissue usually isn't eaten. Usually. Unless you buy lots of that preformed hamburger.
There's that little machine in the processing (excuse me, killing) plants called the stripper that goes along and strips all the meat that humans are unable to cut away with their knives. So? So they feed the spine in there as well. I don't think they aim for the spinal cord, but you know... If you knick a little here and knick a little there, no big deal
But there's you're cause for mad cow disease in humans. As I understand it, cooking doesn't stop this (but I'm not for certain).
Of course that's easy to avoid by getting your meat locally from the corner butcher shop who doesn't employ such butchering (killing) methods as that
Anyway, I'm not too worried about it either, but I just wanted to throw that in to stir the pot a little
I have no idea what GK was trying to say.