Mad Cow Disease


What is it?
Mad Cow Disease, also known as [BSE], is a minor cattle epidemic that has devastated cattle businesses in Europe. The disease, which produces holes in the brain, was first reported in 1986 in Great Britain and has also been reported in France, Ireland, Switzerland, and Portugal. BSE is usually only found in cattle, although it is assumed that BSE can cause CJD.  See Human Victims below.  BSE is caused by waste included in the cattles' feed to increase their milk supply.  Some of the waste, or offals (brain, spleen, thymus, tonsil, and gut), could contain tissues from sheep infected with Scrapie, a related disease. Scrapie is a fatal brain disease found in some sheep.  The name "Scrapie" refers to the furious scraping of itching developed in the sheep.  The UK paid compensation to British farmers for the cattle they lost.   Though the compensation for each cow was only worth half a cow, the total had reached $74.4 million. 
Symptoms:
The first symptom of BSE is a progressive degeneration of the nervous system. Infected cattle may:   
 

    one Be unusually nervous or aggressive.    

    two Have strange posture.    

    three Have difficulty rising from the ground and little coordination.    

    four Have low milk production.    

    five Lose weight while maintaining a healthy appetite.
 The [incubation period] can be from two to eight years, and then the disease can last from two weeks to six months until the animal dies. The only way to diagnose BSE is to examine the brain after death. 
BSE infected beef is thought to cause CJD, or Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, in humans.  In 1989, the Spongiform Encephalopathy Advisory Committee recommended that all offals be thrown away, not reused.  By 1990, the number of cases of BSE in cows reached 300 per week; By 1993, 800 per week.  A media scare caused many problems for British cattle farmers:

     one The German Government banned British beef from their country.   

     two Scientists performed tests that created media hysteria, including discovering a different Spongiform Encephalopathy after [inoculating] a cow with BSE.   
       
     three McDonald's banned British beef from their stores.  

     four 65% of doctors changed their beef eating habits.  

     five Consumption of beef in the UK dropped to the lowest level since 1962.  
     
As McDonald's lifted the beef ban at the end of June, 1997, the Mad Cow scare seems to have died.  While the disease was not a true human epidemic, the scare factor makes it an interesting topic.  Like countless other diseases, there is a possibility it could return in the near future.  Remember, diseases and epidemics just need one spark to start a raging wildfire.

Mad Cow map

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Links

BSE epidemic in Great Britain