Adam H. Putnam, Commissioner    -    Anderson H. (Andy) Rackley, Director

Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE)

Overview

Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE), first identified in 1986 in the United Kingdom and sometimes referred to as Mad Cow Disease, is a fatal disease that causes progressive neurological degeneration in cattle.  It is one of a family of diseases called TSEs, or transmissible spongiform encephalopathies, named for the sponge-like gaps that develop in the brain tissue of diseased animals or people.  One TSE disease that affects humans is called Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (CJD).  The new form of this disease, variant CJD (vCJD), is related to the BSE disease of cattle.  There is strong scientific evidence that the prion agent that causes BSE in cattle is the agent that causes vCJD in people.  So far, there have been numerous cases of vCJD reported in the United Kingdom and elsewhere in Europe, believed to occur in people who consumed beef products contaminated with the infective BSE agent.  To help ensure that this disease does not enter Florida, the Bureau of Compliance Monitoring works cooperatively with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to conduct inspections of feed manufacturers, distributors, transporters, salvagers, and firms that are responsible for feeding ruminant animals such as cows and sheep.  The focus of these inspections is to improve the establishment and amplification of BSE by ensuring that no mammalian protein is used in feed for ruminant animals.  Since 2002, approximately 1,100 BSE inspections have been conducted by the Department to determine compliance with the Ruminant Feed Ban Rule.

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