A first case that could call for others?
Health authorities in the Netherlands are on alert after the mad cow virus was detected in a dead cow on a farm, Dutch Agriculture Minister Piet Adema announced in a letter to parliament on Wednesday.
It was not specified in which municipality or region the farm was located, but it was temporarily prohibited from selling products of animal origin, underlines the site NU.nl.
Bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), commonly known as mad cow disease, affects the central nervous system of cattle.
BSE can also cause the fatal Creutzfeldt-Jakob brain disease in humans, by consuming products from infected cattle.
In his letter, the Dutch Minister of Agriculture reported that the infection had been detected thanks to “active surveillance” by the authorities, underlines the daily De Telegraaf.
For the moment, the variant of the precise disease that affected the deceased cow is not known, analyzes are in progress.
"An atypical
variant
can occur sporadically in older cows, a kind of BSE
of old age
", summarizes in this note Piet Adema.
A cow outside the food chain
According to Piet Adema, the sick cow has not entered the food chain and therefore does not pose a risk to food safety, even in the case of the so-called "classic" variant of the disease.
The "classic variant" is the variant first discovered in Britain in 1986, which sparked the mad cow crisis in the 1990s.
LTO Farmers Federation President Erwin Wunnekink said he was shocked by the news: "The good news is that she was found, so she didn't end up in the human channel, people food.
But there are still many questions.
Where does this come from and how is this possible?
he asks in De Telegraaf.
One of the reasons for the appearance of the disease in cows is in particular the use of animal proteins in their diet.
The use of animal meal was thus banned at European level following the mad cow crisis.
