Re: No prions
All well and good, but overlooks the real reason why that particular risk shouldn't worry anyone.
After the dust had settled, it was proved that the whole thing was bugger all to do with anything endemic in cattle spinal tissue and was actually due to isolated incidents of cross contamination from scrapie afflicted sheep, as was originally suspected all along. This goes a long way toward explaining why the vast epidemic of vCJD predicted rather conspicuously failed to occur.
DEFRA decided to keep that under wraps, for fear of being sued into the middle of next century for their hysterical overreaction and gratuitous, unfounded screwing over of the British beef industry.