Mad Cow Disease
Bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), often referred to as mad cow disease, is a central nervous system (CNS) disease that causes a sponge-like perforation in brain tissues of infected cattle, triggering symptoms such as the inability to stand and ataxia. An abnormal prion is believed to be the infectious agent and the spread of BSE is thought to have been caused by the practice of feeding cattle with meat and bone meal (MBM) derived from BSE-infected cows, thus containing the abnormal prions.
The vast majority of cases of BSE (more than 97% as of 2003) have been reported from the United Kingdom during an epidemic. However, endemic cases have also been reported in other European countries including: Ireland, Switzerland, France, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Portugal and Denmark.
Studies show that sanitary and phytosanitary measures are now the most significant barriers to international meat trade. While authorities responsible for the safety of their food supplies must be allowed to implement measures to protect against BSE and other public health threats, such barriers to trade must only be raised when absolutely necessary and after all the associated costs of implementation have been taken into account.
Consequences
- EU approves proposal to ban exports of meat, containing bones, from herds that had not been free of BSE for six years instead of two. 1996 British government admits for the first time that BSE could be transmitted to humans in a variant form of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD). The classical form is a slow degenerative disease in humans seen in about one person in a million worldwide each year.
- Japan bans imports of meat-and-bone meal from Britain.
- Fast food chain McDonald's Corporation suspends the sale of British beef products in its restaurants in Britain.
- EU ban on British beef and beef products announced.
- Britain's agriculture ministry confirms that mad cow disease can be passed from cow to calf.
- British coroner rules that Peter Hall, a 20-year-old vegetarian who died of the vCJD, contracted it from eating beef burgers as a child. The verdict is the first to legally link a human death to mad cow disease.