ABSTRACT
I. BACKGROUND Bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) is a neurological disease of adult cattle with an insidious onset and progressive, invariably fatal course. It was first recognized in Great Britain in November 1986 (1), where it surged to epizootic levels over the following decade (2). On March 20, 1996, a new form of human spongiform encephalopathy, variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD), was announced in the British Parliament. Although there was no direct reference to an alimentary pathway of transmission, exposure of humans to BSE-infected tissue prior to 1989 was considered the likeliest explanation (3). Soon thereafter, a scientific paper describing the disease was published by Will et al. (4). Evidence is mounting that this human disease is linked to the occurrence of BSE in cattle (5-7).
