Estonia dismisses suspected case of mad cow disease
April 26, 2006
Reuters
TALLINN - Estonian authorities said on Wednesday that tests for mad cow disease had proved negative in the case of a dead 11-year-old animal earlier suspected of being the country's first case of BSE.
"There is no case. Of course, this is a big relief for us," Ago Partel, director of the Veterinary and Food Authority, told Reuters.
Earlier this week Agriculture Ministry officials announced that the disease might have been detected in the cow after a routine test at a slaughterhouse.
If confirmed, it would have been the country's first case of BSE (bovine spongiform encephalopathy), a disease that destroys the brains of cattle.
The cow was from a farm in Jogevamaa county, southeastern Estonia.
BSE was discovered in Britain in 1986 and devastated the country's beef industry. Individual cases of BSE have recently been found in Japan, Canada and the United States.
More than 160 people have died from the human form of the disease, variant Creuzfeldt-Jakob Disease, believed to be contracted by eating meat from infected cattle.
