system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
Can prions from contaminated meat remain on cutlery, dishes, pans etc, after contact with them?

I read that iatrogenic cjd can be transmitted through contaminated surgical instruments after contact with contaminated tissue, so can variant cjd be transmitted in this way, but through the kitchen utensils that were used to cook this meat?  For example, if contaminated meat is cooked in a frying pan, and later normal meat (or any other food) is cooked in the same frying pan, will this normal meat get infected through the frying pan? Will prions from the contaminated meat remain on it?
gpt
The short answer to the question in your title is yes. Prions are remarkably stable across a range of environmental conditions, even cooking.

Your question goes off a bit into the weeds, though - those prions will not "infect" meat you cook on a skillet previously used to cook meat from an infected cow.  Contaminate, probably, in the same way that salmonella bacteria can contaminate vegetables on a counter when you didn't clean it well enough.

To go beyond your question, though, BSE prions are those you would find in beef from an infected cow. vCJD prions are those you'd find in a person infected with BSE prions from an infected cow. You wouldn't find vCJD prions on your skillet unless you were eating people.

Beyond that, the risk of getting vCJD is incredibly small. 250 people or so were infected over the course of the BSE epidemic in Europe, less than half a dozen showing up in the past decade. The risk of cross-contaminating beef on a skillet and developing vCJD via that contamination would be like finding a grain of sand you dropped on a beach ten years ago.