The Hague, The Netherlands — A cow that died recently on a farm in the Netherlands tested positive for mad cow disease, the Dutch government announced Wednesday. .
Agriculture Minister Piet Adema said in a letter to parliamentarians that the farm where the cow died had been closed. He added that infected animals “are not involved in the food chain and do not constitute a risk to food safety.”
Formally called bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), the disease first appeared in British cattle in the late 1980s. Hundreds of people contracted a human-equivalent disease, a brain disease called variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, and many died. Over the years, 4.5 million cows contained the spread. was slaughtered for
After a ban on feed containing meat and bone meal from infected cattle was introduced, the number of BSE cases dropped dramatically.
The last case detected in the Netherlands was in 2011.
Examinations of an eight-year-old cow on a farm in South Holland found that the deceased cow had a naturally occurring form of the disease called atypical BSE, the government said late Wednesday. by animals eating contaminated feed.
Food safety authorities have conducted investigations to trace the offspring of dead animals, as well as cattle that ate or were raised on the same feed. said the ministry.