New case of mad cow disease found in Britain

On Thursday a new case was reported to have been found in a dead cow in Wales, but authorities have said there is no threat to public health and the disease has not entered the food chain.

The last case of “mad cow” disease recorded in Wales was in 2013.

She added: “My officials are working closely with Defra and Apha to investigate the circumstances of this case”.

Mad cow disease claimed the lives of 177 Britons and led to millions of cattle being slaughtered after breaking out in West Sussex in 1984. There was a single case of BSE in Great Britain in 2014.

“If BSE is suspected in a female cow, the APHA will trace any of its offspring that were born up to 2 years before or after the mother showed signs of the disease”. This includes the removal of “specified risk material”, such as the spinal column, brain and skull from carcasses.

Due to its long incubation period – lasting anywhere from two to eight years – isolating and tracking the disease, medically referred to as bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) in the animals and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in humans, has proved hard. Identification of this case demonstrates that the controls we have in place are working well.

This was the first BSE case found in Ireland since 2013 and came just a month after the World Animal Health Organisation (OIE) recognised Ireland as a country having a negligible risk for BSE. The government has not said how old the cow was or the precise location of the case. Since the link between variant CJD and BSE was discovered in 1996 there have been strict controls to prevent meat from infected cattle from entering the food chain.

“The drop in prices has already badly hit farmers financially and it is important they know they have our full support”.