dpa
Geneva
A case of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), or mad cow disease, has been discovered in a cow in Switzerland for the first time in several years.The Federal Food Safety and Veterinary Office said it’s a so-called atypical variant.
“Unlike the classical form, atypical BSE can occur spontaneously and without any connection to animal meal in feed,” the office said.“The carcass was incinerated and therefore poses no risk to other animals or humans.” The case was discovered during routine BSE surveillance in the canton of Graubünden. It involved a 12-year-old cow registered for slaughter. BSE attacks the brain substance of cattle. In classical BSE, animals become infected by being fed animal meal containing prions. The consumption of meat contaminated with BSE can trigger the fatal Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in humans. At the end of the 1980s, BSE occurred mainly in Britain.
