Where's the beef.

Recently, smoking has been banned in a variety of places by many countries and states. This has generally been done as a preventative measure to stop employees from suing their employers in the future if they contract smoking-related diseases.

In light of this I have a suggestion for employers and legislators alike:

Ban the cooking of meat in restaurants.

Bear with me on this, it isn't as far away as you might think. Imagine, if you will, a devout Buddhist who has never eaten meat in his life; let's call him Bernard. For whatever reason Bernard finds employment in a family restaurant which serves lots of sizzling meat dishes and is further exposed to the smoke from cooking meats in the kitchens. Years later, Bernard is diagnosed with variant Creutzfeldt-Jacob Disease (vCJD).

Doctors are mystified. So Bernard's lawyers set about proving that Bernard must have inhaled the prions that cause the disease, at work. They use the following steps:

Prions are in the food chain;
Prions are not damaged in any way by cooking, or even burning at normal kitchen temperatures;
The smoke from grilling meat contains small particles of that meat and therefore disease-causing prions;
Scientists do not know how many prions are needed to cause vCJD and so this is the most likely cause even at very low concentrations.
Bernard has suffered years of exposure to these "second-hand" prions and his employer has not done enough to protect him;

What other solution can there be but to ban the cooking and serving of meat in public places to protect the consumer from disease and the employer from litigation? Who knows, an internet search at a later date might even turn up this blog to show that the employer had been forewarned. In the interest of everybody's health, we should probably call for it now.