Israel Reports First Case of Mad Cow Disease
The Israeli Agriculture Ministry said a brain biopsy performed on the cow by the World Organization for Animal Health in Switzerland showed it had been infected with mad cow disease or bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE).
The ministry said it would put an emergency plan into effect to examine the brains of all cattle over the age of 30 months that are sent to slaughterhouses before releasing their meat to the market.
The internal organs of slaughtered cattle over the age of 1 year would be destroyed, the ministry said in a statement. The ministry also said three cows of the same age group as the infected animal and two of its offspring, now in quarantine, would be culled.
BSE is believed to have spread from Britain in the mid-1990s to the European continent through feed-meal contaminated with the infectious agent.
Scientists have linked beef from animals infected with mad cow disease to the spread of variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (vCJD), which has killed more than 100 people, mostly in Britain.
