Gutless?

Whether the difference is audible to the average listener or not, musicians claim that classical music played on instruments with metal strings doesn't sound like the same music played on strings made of the traditional beef gut.

And since metal strings came into use after some of the greatest composers lived and worked, the only way to play their music the way they meant it to be heard is to use period instruments strung with the gut strings. This has become a problem as string makers in the Europe have run into regulations regarding the use of beef products -- regulations which are designed to protect people from contracting the human form of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), or mad cow disease. In people, the disease is called "new variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (nvCJd)," an unfortunate coincidence for people named Jacob Kreutzfeldt. It has the same effect of degenerating brain tissue leading to death.

Cows get BSE when they eat pieces of cows that have had the disease, something they only do when cattle remains are ground up as a part of the artificial feed given on some ranches and dairy operations. It specifically lingers in the brain, spinal column and digestive tract of the diseased animals, and that leads us to the problem that musical stringmakers have to face. Beef gut, being a part of the aforementioned digestive tract, can hold the BSE organisms in it. Those organisms can infect humans, causing the nvCJd. Because outbreaks of both diseases have been reported in different countries in Europe, strict regulations govern the use of potentially infected cattle products. Up until recently, stringmakers were given special exceptions from the rule, partly because of a couple of factors we'll look at in a minute. But recently those exceptions have begun to lapse and several companies are either switching to synthetic string material or are considering it.

Stringmakers say the danger to people is slight -- although even affected meat cooked well-done may not be entirely free of BSE organisms, the stringmaking process is a lot more than just cooking. Part of the string creation involved the beef gut material being bleached as well as varnished, chemicals which will kill most disease germs and no few non-disease full-size creatures. In order to risk exposure similar to the risk people face when consuming untested or untreated cattle, a person would have to eat several "metres" of string, the story says. A "metre" is a little more than a yard.

Yes, you read correctly: In order to risk true exposure to the BSE disease organism, you would have to eat your instrument strings. And not just your instrument strings, but probably strings on a couple of other instruments around you -- more if you are a violinist, fewer if you're a bassist and you may be able to pull it off by your lonesome if you play the harp.

I'm all for reducing the risk of disease and I've got no special interest in whether I hear Handel the way my many-times great grandparents heard Handel. But it seems to me that if a disease vector depends on chewing up and swallowing yards of bleached, varnished beef gut, most folks are at low risk of exposure. And those that go ahead and test out that theory may have had a few holes in their heads to start with.