What Canadians need to know about mad cow disease
By Bradford Duplisea Jun. 2, 2003
Over 2.8 million kilograms of potentially contaminated material was imported after 1996
Mad Cow disease, or its scientific name Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE), is a fatal brain-wasting disease in cattle which was first identified in the United Kingdom in 1986. No one knows for sure how the first cow (or cows) got BSE, but we know it spread throughout Britain and eventually the world through the cannibalistic practice of making cattle feed out of the bits of cattle (offal) that are not fed to humans. Like a “chain-letter,” offal from a Mad Cow infected many more cattle and offal of those cattle infected many more.
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