Mad Cow Diseases Identified in Brazil; 2 Unusual Cases Detected Causing the Suspension of Beef Exports to China

Yesterday, the Agricultural Ministry announced the detection of two unusual cases of mad cow disease called the bovine spongiform encephalopathy or BSE in Brazil that caused the suspension of beef exports to China.

According to a Phys.org report, this temporary initiative was taken under the present bilateral protocol between Brazil and China. However, the ministry emphasized that there was no danger to either animal or human health.

The said two cases were described in a ministry statement as "atypical" since the disease occurred spontaneously and intermittently, not associated with the ingestion of contaminated food.

The statement also said the two BSE cases were detected while health inspections were carried out in aged cattle in two states, specifically Minas Gerais and Mato Grosso.

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1st Time in Brazil

According to the ministry, which officially notified the World Organization for Animal Health or OIE, Brazil has never recorded and reported "a classic case of BSE." It elaborated, this is the fourth and fifth BSE case detected in over 23 years of health vigilance for the illness.

A similar Morocco Latest News report said that in mid-2019, Brazil temporarily suspended its exports of cattle to China, following the detection of the occurrence of an atypical BSE case in Mato Grosso in a 17-year-old cow.

Mad cow disease originally occurred in Britain during the 1980s and transmitted to many countries in Europe and other parts of the world, resulting in consumer alarm and stimulating a serious catastrophe in the beef industry.

As indicated in this report, the spread was widely spread by feeding cattle with infected and dead animals' bones and meat meal.

In connection to this, the people died then, following the contraction of the human variant, Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, believed to be transmitted by consuming infected beef.

Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention describes BSE as a progressive neurological disease of cattle resulting from infection by an atypical transmissible agent known as a prion.

According to the CDC description, the transmissible agent's nature is not clearly understood. At present, the most accepted theory is that this particular agent is an altered form of a normal protein called prion protein.

For reasons that have yet to be understood, the health agency explained on its website that the normal prion protein turns into a harmful form that causes the impairment of the cattle's central nervous system.

There is growing evidence that there are different BSE strains. These include the typical or classic BSE strain accountable for the outbreak in the United Kingdom and the H and L, or two atypical strains.

The Classic Strain

The BSE strain accountable for the majority of cases of BSE in Canada is the same classic or typical variant associated with the outbreak that occurred in the UK.

It is known to be avoidable by removing BSE contaminated feed and has been causally associated with vCJD in humans.

As specified in the 2018 report of the CDC, all five of the United States-born BSE cases and two of the 20 Canadian-born BSE cases were results of atypical BSE strains.

Out of these seven North American occurrences, four were associated with an atypical BSE, specifically the H-type, and three were detected as the L-type.

The strain type for the three other cases in North America, a 13-year-old BSE-infected Canadian cow, a 10-year-old BSE-infected US cow, and an 11-year-old US cow, also infected with BSE, have been determined as the L-type.

Report about the atypical mad cow cases detected in Brazil is shown on NewsRme's YouTube video below: