December 24, 2025
Today, I was learning about “mad cow disease” or bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE).
This incurable and fatal disease involves consumption of infected beef with misfolded proteins with similar makeup named “prions”, which are very difficult to get rid of in the natural environment due to its resistance to decomposition.
Cows will be affected if they eat MBM, or meat-and-bone meal, which was a common type of feed in the 1980s and 90s because it was cheap. This contained the remains of dead cows. Cows with mad cow disease were characterized as losing coordination, nervousness, aggression, difficulty standing, tremors, and weight loss. A cow can only be confirmed to have BSE after their death by examining their brain, as prions leave holes in the tissue. Human ingestion of cows who had eaten the feed caused an outbreak of BSE in the UK.
The mad cow disease crisis was worsened by inaction from the British government, who attempted to convince the public that the beef was safe to eat. However, in 1996, the first case of vCJD (a variant of Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease, which is also incurable and deadly), was linked to eating cow meat infected with BSE.
Early attempts to stop the disease from spreading were futile. For example, the UK implemented laws against the use of cow meat in the feed but neglected to remove the bone or bone marrow because they thought it did not affect the disease.
Once the science world had taken action, it was too late. Over 4 million cattle were slaughtered and almost 200 died in Britain alone. However, there are now less than 5 cases per 1 million people in Canada, and in the United States, people who received blood transfusions from, lived in, visited, or served in military bases in England, Ireland, and the UK until 2022 were forbidden from donating blood.
I believe the government’s actions in the UK reflect on the human urge to pretend as if one can control all possible factors in life – even death – though it may cost human and animal lives. I believe that in the future, the general population should continue to push for more advocation for research or education on diseases so that one may be better equipped to deal with similar events in the future.
Reference:
https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org
https://www.cdc.gov
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
https://www.fda.gov
