New “Mad Cow” Case Discovered
April 25, 2012
A case of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), or “mad cow” disease, has been found in California, the U.S. Department of Agriculture confirmed on April 24. BSE is a brain disease in cattle that causes odd behavior, difficulty walking, and then death. It is one of a group of fatal brain disorders caused by microscopic particles known as prions.
The latest BSE case is only the fourth ever found in the United States. In a statement, John Clifford, the Agriculture Department’s chief veterinary officer, noted that the infected dairy cow in central California did not enter the food supply. “Both human health and animal health are protected with regards to this issue,” declared Clifford. “There is really no cause for alarm here with regard to this animal.” According to Clifford, the California cow did not get the disease from eating infected cattle feed, but rather is what scientists call an atypical case of BSE. It is “just a random mutation that can happen every once in a great while in an animal,” noted Bruce Akey, director of the New York State Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory at Cornell University. Nevertheless, South Korean retailers have pulled U.S. beef off supermarket shelves.
Japan halted U.S. beef imports after the first case of BSE in the United States was diagnosed in late December 2003. At the time, Japan was the top importer of U.S. beef. The ban lasted for nearly two years, causing major financial problems for the U.S. beef industry.
Mad cow disease was first identified in 1986 in the United Kingdom. Scientists think mad cow disease arose when cattle were fed supplements containing brains and spinal cords from sheep infected with scrapie, another prion disease. In 1988, the British government banned the use of cattle and sheep by-products to feed other cattle and sheep.
Research suggests that humans can contract a brain disease similar to BSE–Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease–by eating infected meat from infected animals. The disease causes personality change, loss of body function, and eventually death. In the 1990′s, an outbreak affected people in their teens and 20′s in the United Kingdom. In 1996, British experts suggested that these cases could have been caused by eating beef from BSE-infected cattle. The British government subsequently agreed to destroy more than 100,000 cattle at risk for BSE.
Additional World Book articles:
- Prusiner, Stanley Ben
- How Safe Is Our Food Supply (a special report)
- Rogue Proteins (a special report)
- Food 2003 (Back in Time article)
- Food 2004 (Back in Time article)