In what is expected to be largely a non-event in the cattle markets, USDA today announced that an atypical case of Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE) was detected in an 11-year-old cow in Alabama. USDA says the animal never entered slaughter channels and at no time presented a risk to the food supply or to human health in the United States.
USDA Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service’s (APHIS) National Veterinary Services Laboratories (NVSL) have determined that this cow was positive for atypical (L-type) BSE. The animal was showing clinical signs and was found through routine surveillance at an Alabama livestock market. APHIS and Alabama veterinary officials are gathering more information on the case.
BSE is not contagious and exists in two types – classical and atypical. Classical BSE is the form that occurred primarily in the United Kingdom beginning in the late 1980s, and it has been linked to variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD) in people. The primary source of infection for classical BSE is feed contaminated with the infectious prion agent, such as meat-and-bone meal containing protein derived from rendered infected cattle. FDA regulations have prohibited the inclusion of mammalian protein in feed for cattle and other ruminants since 1997 and have also prohibited high risk tissue materials in all animal feed since 2009.
