[Renegade 13]

Originally posted by Baron Munchausen:
Yep, BSE is caused by a prion. It developed from scrapie, a similar disease in sheep, because of the practice of feeding the rendered leftovers of slaughter to other livestock. Admittedly it took a while, so prion diseases are not easily transmissible from one species to another, but it does occur. Similarly, the largest spike in 'variant CJD' in the world is currently occuring in Britain where they had this huge problem with BSE. It's small by epidemic standards (a few hundred cases) but quite signifigant in proportional terms. This is the reason for the strict standards in US livestock industry forbidding feeding the remains of animals to other animals.

In Canada, the practice of feeding the rendered leftovers of slaughtered animals to other animals was made illegal in 1997. However, in the United States, the practice is still (I believe, correct me if I'm wrong) in effect. Also, the US has 10 times the number of cattle than Canada does, therefore the odds are the US has many undetected cases of BSE lurking somewhere. Personally, the whole idea of getting BSE from animals doesn't worry me. Very, very few people die from v.CJD from eating contaminated meat.
However, if you look at food poisoning, lots of people die each week from that illness, and yet we never hear anything about that in the news. Much of the hype has to do with calling it "Mad Cow Disease". I think that's at least half the problem.