What is BSE?

When/Where did BSE begin?
BSE was first noticed in cattle in the British Isles in 1985 -- diagnosed, confirmed, and named in 1986.

What/Who can get BSE?
Only cattle can get BSE. Similar brain-wasting diseases occur in sheep, mink, deer, and elk. The human form is called Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD).

What are the symptoms of BSE and the similar diseases?
The brain-destroying symptoms first cause cattle to not want to be touched on the head. This then leads to nervous symptoms of staggering, anxiety, and hyperactivity. Before death, the victims are lethargic and lifeless. Death can occur in days, months, or almost a year in humans. The wasted, destroyed brain has Swiss cheese and "sponge-like" holes in the tissue. Symptoms may not show for 10 years after contact with the infectious agent.

How did cattle get BSE?
It is suspected that the cattle form of the disease may have begun from feeding offal (meat and bone meal from slaughter plants) containing sheep having had a disease called scrapie. Then, a rampant spread of BSE when an infected animal was rendered into a meat and bone meal and fed back to cattle. Until the mid-1980s, feeding of meat and bone meal was common and without incident since the mid-1940s. Processing changes of offal into meat and bone meal in the early 1980s may have allowed the disease organism to survive in feed.

How is BSE linked to the human form of the disease, CJD?
The first report of a "suspected" link to the human form of the brain disease was in 1996, ten years after discovery of BSE in cattle. Ten young Britons contacted a new form of CJD, which is called new variant CJD (nvCJD). The nvCJD is very similar to the organism in cattle, BSE. Afflicting the young was odd. Old CJD, when found, historically is in people 60 years of age. This led to the suspicion that nvCJD was probably caused by people eating BSE-infected cattle processed into sausages or meat pie type products.

How common is CJD, nvCJD, and BSE?
CJD randomly afflicts 60-year-old humans at the rate of one in a million.

Over 90 human cases of the nvCJD in various age groups have occurred since 1996, mostly in the United Kingdom with a few cases in other European Countries (France, Ireland). Of these cases, some were the old CJD and some in people who do not eat beef. This is about 80-90 cases of nvCJD in 15 years of a 60 million population.

BSE is likewise confined to Europe. About 180,000 cases have been diagnosed in Britain's cattle since 1986 and 1,300 cattle in the rest of Europe (Spain, Poland, France, Switzerland, Germany, Ireland, Netherlands, and Portugal).

What is the biggest concern about BSE and nvCJD?
Probably the biggest fear is the element of the unknown. It is not known for sure how or if the human and cattle forms of the disease are directly related to eating infected beef. It is not known how some people contracted nvCJD without having eaten beef. In fact, the BSE agent is found in parts of cattle intestinal tracts and nervous system but not at all in red meat. Cross species contamination of the disease was heightened when British cats were first noted to have the brain-wasting disease in 1990.

What steps have been taken to control BSE and nvCJD?
Over four million cattle over 30 months of age were destroyed in Britain. There is still a current program of identifying and slaughtering older European cattle since BSE is rarely found in young cattle. Various quarantines of live cattle and beef have been in place for five to fifteen years. Use of internal cattle organs in processed meats was limited - processing procedures were changed. Laws were passed in Europe and the United States to prevent the use of rendered ruminant offal (such as meat and bone meal from cattle, sheep, and/or goats) being fed to cattle. Rendered ruminant offal being fed to non-ruminants, like swine and poultry, is still practiced in the United States but recently prohibited in Europe.

Is BSE and/or nvCJD in the United States?
If they are, they have not been diagnosed either in cattle or humans. Any animal suspected of a nervous disorder is tested. About 12,000 suspicious cattle have tested negative by United States government veterinarians since 1990. It is difficult for science to prove a negative - that something does not exist.

How would BSE in the USA impact the beef cattle industry?
100 million cattle in the United States, over $2.5 billion worth of beef products exported each year, would be at risk.

E-mail address: Tiff_Conrad@ncsu.edu

Mailing Address:
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Lumberton, NC 28359-2280

Phone: 910-671-3276
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Date Created 3/5/01