Mad cow disease found
in French goat

Fri, 28 Jan 2005
CBC News

BRUSSELS - European scientists have found mad cow disease in a French goat – the first naturally occurring case known to hit an animal other than cattle.

The finding immediately raised fears that bovine spongiform encephalopathy – which can cause variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease in people – has crossed to other species eaten by humans.

The European Commission confirmed the BSE case on Friday, but officials said the public faces minimal risks because of strict precautions put in place several years ago to protect human and animal food chains.

Philip Tod, a spokesman for Health Commissioner Markos Kyprianou, said that the case was "an isolated case" to the best of the organization's knowledge.

"There is no particular cause for alarm at the moment, and our advice is that consumers need not change their habits," he said.

The goat, which was slaughtered in France in 2002, was first believed to have scrapie, a disease of goats and sheep similar to BSE but not infectious for humans.

Scrapie, BSE and variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease all belong to a family of diseases that can cause brain tissue to degenerate, giving it a sponge-like appearance.

The infected goat was the only animal in a herd of 300 that tested positive for the disease, scientists found.

It took more than two years to determine that the illness was likely BSE because scientists implanted the infected material into mice to see if they would develop the illness. They did.

None of the herd entered the human or animal food chain, the European Commission said.

The commission wants to test 200,000 goats in 25 European Union member countries over the next six months, focusing on countries where BSE has been found in cattle in the past.

At least 148 people in Britain alone have died from variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease after eating tainted meat during an outbreak of mad cow disease there in the 1990s.