No thanks. I'd rather not get prion disease. Also:

1. Eating collagen supplements has not been established as a necessary dietary requirement. Your cells synthesize collagen from amino acids, with vitamin C serving as a required cofactor. Some trials report modest improvements in wrinkles, skin hydration, joint pain, or bone measures, but that supports collagen as an optional targeted supplement, not something everyone must consume to remain healthy.

2. Bovine is common, but commercial collagen also comes from porcine skin, chicken cartilage, fish skin/scales, and jellyfish. A randomized clinical trial, for example, used pork-skin collagen, while another tested fish-derived collagen. Actual collagen is animal-derived unless produced through recombinant biotechnology.

3. “No synthetic amino-acid mixture comes close in effect.” This lacks evidence. In a 2025 randomized double-blind study, participants received 30 g of collagen hydrolysate, a free-amino-acid mixture precisely matching collagen’s amino-acid profile, or placebo. Collagen and the amino-acid mixture produced similar blood amino-acid increases, and neither increased muscle connective-tissue protein synthesis versus placebo over six hours.

You know much theory, but demonstrate zero practical knowledge:

0. There is near-zero risk of prion disease from cows in the US considering they're domesticated, not wild. There is no recent history of it either in the US. Collagen hydrolysate is highly processed to be short-chain.

1. As one gets older, vitamin C, no matter how much of it is consumed, is useful but insufficient for collagen synthesis.

2. You're right in theory about chicken/fish/pork collagen, but the commercial availability of their derived collagen hydrolysate is terrible or contaminated. Only bovine collagen hydrolysate has excellent and contaminant-free commercial availability.

3. You're measuring the wrong thing. It is not isolated amino acids have the resulting healing effects. It is only peptides, and these are poorly synthesized from plain amino acids.

If I understand the literature correctly, there is no strong evidence in favor of collagen as a dietary supplement outside of a dose just before weight lifting, because without the exertion the amino acids in blood simply don't reach tendons and ligaments.