Kuru is what manifests itself after eating other humans but the incubation period is around five to twenty years before symptoms show so not long enough since the beginning of the ZA

 

Ya... you go crazy/mad AFTER eating human meat... not before, after... :zombies_rolleyes:

 

Prion diseases are bad cess. Prions are these weird partial protein things - smaller than a virus. They reproduce by mangling your other protein molecules.
They're only transmitted through the central nervous system tissues, but are impossible to destroy, as far as we know. Put the little bastards in an autoclave and they'll still be just as dangerous when you're done.

The reason that factory farms had a problem with mad cow disease is that they were grinding up whole, diseased cow carcasses and feeding them to the other cows. After much kicking and screaming, the FDA got them to stop (at least that's what they tell us). This is one of the reasons I only eat beef whose source I'm comfortable with.

If the Termites are chopping people up and boiling them (the sort of preparation that would lead to the stripped bones we saw while they were herding Team Rick to the boxcar) and some of their victims had prion disease, they could certainly infect the whole group.

But if you're eating BBQ survivor, unless your plate gets a cross-section of spine, you're good.