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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Possible case of mad cow disease found in U.S.

Libby Quaid Associated Press

WASHINGTON – The Agriculture Department is investigating a possible case of mad cow disease, the agency’s chief veterinarian said Saturday.

A routine test indicated the possible presence of mad cow disease, said John Clifford, the USDA official. The agency would not say where the animal was from.

The cow did not enter the human or animal food chain, Clifford said.

The department is conducting more detailed tests at its laboratory in Ames, Iowa, and should have results in four to seven days.

“This inconclusive result does not mean we have found a new case of BSE,” Clifford said, giving the abbreviation for the disease’s formal name, bovine spongiform encephalopathy.

In humans, eating meat products contaminated with mad cow disease has been linked to more than 150 deaths worldwide from variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease, a rare and fatal nerve disease.

A majority of the deaths were in Britain, where there was an outbreak of mad cow disease that started in the mid-1980s. There was one case confirmed in the United States, although the federal Centers for Disease Control believes the person got the disease while in the United Kingdom.

No one is known to have contracted the disease inside the United States.

U.S. government investigators have found two cases of mad cow disease. The first was in December 2003 in a Canadian-born cow in Washington state. The second was last June in a cow that was born and raised in Texas.

In response to the first case, the Agriculture Department increased its level of testing for the disease. As of Friday, 644,603 of the nation’s estimated 95 million head of cattle had been tested.

The United States has had three cases in which “inconclusive” results turned out to be negative. Two of those times were in 2004, and the third was in 2005.