The Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock of Brazil (MAPA) reported today the appearance of a suspected case of Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy, a disease known as “mad cow”. The authorities are already taking all the necessary preventive measures.
In a statement, the agricultural ministry of the neighboring country indicated that «the suspicion has already been submitted to laboratory analysis for confirmation or not and, depending on the result, the corresponding actions will be applied immediately.
The brief press release did not specify the area in which the disease was detected, or further details of the matter. Although some journalistic versions of regional media indicate that he would have been detected in an elderly animal in the state of Pará.
The result of the second analysis, which will be the final one, will be available this Thursday.
For its part, the appearance of the report forced preemptively paralyze the slaughterhouse farm market. This is a key aspect to take into account, since Brazil is the world’s leading exporter of beef and news like this means that their buyer markets can stop imports.
In 2021, the country had already suspended beef exports to China after confirming two cases of “atypical” mad cow disease at two meat plants.
What is “mad cow” about?
Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE) is a progressive, degenerative disease with widespread neurological damagewhich has a long gestation period in cattle (up to 8 to 10 years) and ends with the death of the animal.
The disease was identified in England in 1985 and, although its occurrence is uncertain, there is scientific agreement that it is associated with cattle feeding with meals of animal origin that would not have received the proper heat treatment.
This problem would include sheep, which suffer from an equivalent disease called “scrapie”, and similar diseases have also been described in other ruminants and also in cats, foxes and certain types of deer.
The illness is caused by an unconventional transmissible agent which is an infectious protein called a prion and is characterized by having a long and variable incubation period of around 4 or 5 years.
Humans can acquire the disease by consuming infected meat products. When it comes from cattle, the disorder It’s called Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease., which leads to insanity and death. Although the cases are rare.
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