990628 “Mad Cow” Disease Risk Minimal In U.S.

Chicago - Americans face minimal risk of developing the human variant of the deadly “mad cow” disease because of protective regulations.

The American Medical Association's Council on Scientific Affairs said there have been 39 cases in the United Kingdom and one case in France of “new variant” Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, the human form of the brain-destroying disease believed contracted from eating infected meat products.

But there have been no cases reported in the United States, either in humans or cattle and the risk of infection is minimal, the council said.

The form of the disease that attacks cattle, bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) or mad cow disease, has never been known to exist in U.S. cattle and regulations covering feeding practices appear to safeguard the cattle population, the council's report said.

Regulations also are adequate to prevent entry of foreign sources of the disease into the United States, it said.

The disease is thought to be transmitted to humans by an infectious protein known as a prion.

Mad cow disease was first diagnosed in British cattle in 1986, and there have been 173,126 animal cases in the United Kingdom, it said. Those herds were destroyed.

“Unique circumstances in the United Kingdom caused the emergence and propagation of BSE in cattle, including widespread use of meat and bonemeal cattle feed derived from scrapie-infected sheep,” study author Litjen Tan wrote in the report published in this week's Journal of the American Medical Association.

Scrapie is believed to be the form of the disease that attacks sheep.

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