Agriculture and Farming Atlas
The Incubation, the Cull and the Ban
Bovine spongiform encephalopathy, mad cow disease, is usually summed up in one line: a fatal brain disease of cattle tied to an epidemic and a food scare. The specifics behind that line are worth their own page.
A four to five year guess, still disputed
The disease is incurable and always fatal. Its symptoms move from abnormal behavior, trouble walking and weight loss to the cow becoming unable to function normally at all. How long it takes to reach that point is still disputed; in 2002 the World Health Organization put the gap between infection and the first symptoms at roughly four to five years, though the record on the timing remains conflicting.
What the epidemic changed
The disease reached cattle through their own feed: protein derived from infected animal remains, fed back to other cattle. The United Kingdom epidemic of the 1980s and 1990s, and the disease's transmission to humans as variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, together led to the destruction of millions of cattle. What followed was not only a cull. It was a sweeping ban on feeding ruminant derived protein to ruminants, and lasting changes to beef trade and food safety regulation that reached well beyond the United Kingdom.
Where To Read More
- Bovine Spongiform EncephalopathyPrion and Emerging Livestock DiseasesSubject of the essay.
- CattleCattle and Cattle BreedsCattle: the species BSE's own attested relationship names directly, and the species the cull and the feed ban both bore on.