Source: Susan Kelly, MEATINGPLACE, 8/29/18



A six-year-old mixed-breed beef cow in Florida has tested positive for atypical H-type Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy, or BSE, USDA said.

The animal never entered slaughter channels and at no time presented a risk to the food supply or to human health, the agency said.

The cow was initially tested at the Colorado State University Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory as part of routine surveillance of cattle that are deemed unsuitable for slaughter. APHIS and Florida veterinary officials are gathering more information on the case.

According to the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE), atypical BSE cases do not impact official BSE risk status recognition because this form of the disease is believed to occur spontaneously in all cattle populations at a very low rate. “Therefore, this finding of an atypical case will not change the negligible risk status of the United States, and should not lead to any trade issues,” USDA said.

BSE is not contagious and exists in two types: classical and atypical.  Classical BSE is the form that occurred primarily in the United Kingdom, beginning in the late 1980s and has been linked to variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD) in people.

This is the nation’s sixth detection of BSE. Of the five previous U.S. cases, the first, in 2003, was a case of classical BSE in a cow imported from Canada; the rest have been atypical (H- or L-type) BSE, USDA said.

The primary source of infection for classical BSE is feed contaminated with the infectious prion agent, such as meat-and-bone meal containing protein derived from rendered infected cattle. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulations have prohibited the inclusion of mammalian protein in feed for cattle and other ruminants since 1997 and have prohibited high-risk tissue materials in all animal feed since 2009.

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