Amsterdam, Feb 1, (dpa/GNA) – A cow suffering from mad cow disease was discovered on a Dutch farm, but its meat did not get into the food chain, so there is no risk to the public, the Ministry of Agriculture told the Dutch parliament in The Hague on Wednesday.
Eating meat contaminated with the disease, known formally as bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), can cause the deadly Creutzfeldt-Jakob brain disease in humans.
The ministry did not say where the affected farm is located, but authorities said the facility has been isolated and neither manure, meat, nor animals are allowed to be transported away.
The authorities are now tracking down calves from the infected animal, which would be killed. This also applies to cattle that have been given the same feed.
The laboratory must still determine which variant of the disease was present, the authorities said.
The last time the so-called atypical variant of mad cow disease was found in the Netherlands was in 2011. This can occur, for example, in old animals.
The so-called classic variant was first discovered in Britain in 1986 and was mainly caused by animal protein in animal feed. In the Netherlands there have been 88 cases of classical BSE since 1997.
GNA