U.S. Monitors Cows for Mad Cow Disease

U.S. Monitors Cows for Mad Cow Disease

NewsMax.com Wires
Saturday, March 24, 2001

CHICAGO (UPI) – The Agriculture Department has been monitoring 28 cows imported from Belgium, the United Kingdom and Germany for possible exposure to "mad cow" disease, but so far the animals have exhibited no sign of illness, it said Friday.

Two of the cows are in Minnesota, one in Illinois, four in Vermont and 21 in Texas.

"We've been monitoring them since 1996, the ones in Vermont even longer than that," USDA spokeswoman Anna Cherry said. "These particular animals came in legally and since the BSE [bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or mad cow disease] outbreak in Europe, we've taken the necessary precautions."

The animals show no signs of illness, and the owners notify federal agriculture officials whenever they are sold, Cherry said.

"When they die, the remains will come to us for testing," she said.

The Minnesota cows were imported from Belgium, the Vermont cows from the United Kingdom and the others from Germany, she said.

The confirmation came in the wake of this week's seizure of more than 350 sheep from two Vermont farmers. The USDA suspects the sheep may have been exposed to mad cow disease through contaminated feed. Cherry said the sheep tested positive for transmissible spongiform encephalopathy, the family to which mad cow and the sheep disease scrapie fall.

TSEs are brain-wasting diseases that produce holes in the brain. Scrapie is not believed to be a threat to human health, but mad cow is suspected of causing variant Creuzfeld-Jakob disease.

"The cows have shown no indication, but that's why they're under surveillance," Cherry said. "If the cows tested positive or started to exhibit symptoms of some kind, we would immediately take action."

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