Mad cow

             The origin of mad cow disease is not known definitively. However, there are many theories to the origin of the disease. The London Daily printed an article about the disease stating that the cause of it was from the Chernobyl accident, because they both occurred in the same year (1986). They believe that the radioactive particles from the accident were carried to Great Britain by wind, and contaminated the land that the cattle grazed on. "The scientific community is unaware of these facts partly because they uninformed about the impacts of the Chernobyl accident partly because the British Government isn't concerned to initiate these kind of research." (London-daily.com/madcow) Other scientists suspect that it may be the result of feeding rendered sheep remains to cattle. BSE is thought to have come from a similar disease in sheep called scrapie. In the 1980s, producers of cattle feed (which often included ground meat and bone meal by-products from sheep) changed the way they processed feed. The change somehow allowed the scrapie disease agent to survive the cattle feed production process. Thus, contaminated food was fed to cattle, which then came down with BSE. At the time, neither scrapie nor BSE were thought to affect humans. So, meat (nervous tissue) from BSE-infected cows made it into the food supply. Humans who ate the infected meat (probably hamburger or other processed meats) contracted the BSE-causing agent and developed nvCJD. (http://w3.aces.uiuc.edu/AnSci/BSE/).
             During my interview I asked Annie where she thought mad cow disease originated from, and she stated that "Mad Cow disease originates from animals eating other animal's remains such as brains, spinal chords or tonsils." .
             Other scientists believe that BSE emerged spontaneously in cattle. Irrespective of the differences in belief about the origin, scientists agree that prevention, control and curative measures need to be found to combat this disease.