Mad cow disease

Mad cow disease emerged as a highly publicized food safety crisis of the mid-1990s, largely confined to Great Britain.

Mad cow disease or Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy is a disease that strikes cows causing them to develop spongy areas in their brains and suffer neurological damage.

Mad cow disease develops in cows insidiously, quickly and relentless.
*It is insidious because under apparently mild symptoms lurks a fatal outcome
*It is quick because the infected cow does one to six months after the first symptoms
*It is relentless because there is no cure

The most widely accepted theory is that BSE is a prion disease. A prion is a protein molecule that instead of forming a spiral like a telephone cord, forms a straight fiber.

Since 1996 there has been increasing evidence linking consumption of beef from cows with BSE to area debilitating and fatal neurological humans called ‘New Variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease’.
Mad cow disease