The UN food agency today warned that mad cow disease could spread worldwide and urged governments to take steps to prevent the epidemic reaching humans.
"There is an increasingly grave situation developing in the European Union, with BSE being identified in cattle in several member-states of the EU which have, until recently, been regarded as free from the disease", the Rome-based Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said.
Scientists believe that bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), or mad-cow disease, may be linked to the new fatal human illness variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD), which causes victims' brains to degenerate.
AFP