What Is Mad Cow Disease?

WHAT IS MAD COW DISEASE?

-Mad cow disease, formally known as Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE).

-Is a chronic degenerative disease that attacks the central nervous system of cattle.

-Destroying brain tissue and eventually causing dementia and death. There is no known cure.

IN HUMANS

-In human beings it is known as the Creutzfeldt-Jakob syndrome

-A rare neuro-degenerative disease that is a contagious form of spongiform encephalitis,

-It is thought to be caused by a slow virus which is usually fatal and has no cure.

-The main symptom is dementia (deterioration of brain function),

-Other symptoms which can also occur include deteriorating muscles, tremors, and a variety of different neurological conditions.

-Recent research has linked this disease with bovine spongiform encephalitis (BSE), more popularly known as "Mad Cow Disease," which is thought to be caused by a prion (an abnormally-configured protein).

WHAT TOOK PLACE BEFORE 1987 AND THE SUPPRISE OF BSE

-Scrapie, a disease that infected sheep, was thought of as a disease of sheep that did not infect humans,

although its tissues were known to contain infection.

-When BSE arrived, it was immediately thought, because there were no other natural uses, to be derived from scrapie and for this to have been fed to cattle in the meal that they ate (to increase their milk production).

-By the direction of the feeder guy, a change had taken place in the way that this was made in the early 1980s and this, taking place at a similar time to the original infection of the cattle, was felt to be the answer. It is now suggested that MAFF had been shown cattle with this disease before, and may have known about it in 1983, but did nothing.

1987 CONTINUED

-A small farm in Surrey reported more than one cow developing a strange neurological disease.

-The cattle were killed, the brains removed, and the animals destroyed. When it was found that the cattle had a disease never reported before the farmer wanted to publish the data but was told not to by head cow guy.

-When it is calculated, it seems that approximately 100 cattle had developed BSE symptoms before 1987 and many more would have been infected.

1990; THE YEAR OF THE MEDIA HYPE

-John Gummer, at the time the Minister for Agriculture, tries to give his daughter a beefburger in front of the cameras outside parliament (she refused). By this time the numbers of cases were reaching 300 per week.

-Compensation was stepped up to the full value of the cow and numbers continued to rise. The German Government decided that it would not accept British beef as food in their country because of the risk that it potentially had to their population.

-Gummer was furious and demanded that less strict laws be taken through the EC Agriculture Committee. The amount of compensation payable to farmers for a case of BSE was increased. Lacey demanded that all infected herds should be slaughtered and that restocking should take place from abroad.

1990 CONTINUED

-Roger Eddy made it clear that he may have seen cases of BSE