United Kingdom BSE outbreak

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The United Kingdom BSE outbreak was a major epidemic of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE; commonly known as "mad cow disease"), an invariably fatal neurodegenerative disease in cattle, and its human form, variant Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease (vCJD). As of April 2023, 183,325 BSE cases in cattle and 178 human cases of vCJD have been reported in the United Kingdom. The outbreak saw the agricultural industry cull over 4.4 million cattle in an effort to contain the disease, and British beef exports were banned by a number of countries including the European Union, with some bans remaining in place until 2020. It also caused a public health crisis and a political scandal, when vCJD was linked to the consumption of beef contaminated with prions—the infectious agent associated with BSE and other transmissible spongiform encephalopathies (TSEs). The practice of supplementing cattle feed with meat-and-bone meal, which was made from the remains of animals including other cattle, exacerbated the...

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