Farm sealed off after first case of mad cow disease in three years

MAD cow disease has returned to Britain for the first time in three years, with a case confirmed at a Scottish farm yesterday.

Routine tests on a dead cow at a beef farm in Aberdeenshire found the animal was carrying bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), more commonly known as mad cow disease.

The disease can be fatal if transmitted to humans who eat infected meat, but experts said there was no threat to human health because the infected cow had not entered the food chain.

The chief veterinary officer, Christine Middlemiss, said: ‘There is no risk to food safety or human health in any part of the UK. I would urge any farmer who has concerns to seek veterinary advice.’

Scientists said the risk to the public was ‘exceedingly small’, but warned it could mark the beginning of a new outbreak of BSE. The case could prove hugely damaging to the beef industry – which has struggled to restore its reputation following the BSE scandal of the 1990s – with some countries lifting their bans on British beef imports only this year.

The five-year-old cow that tested positive for BSE died on October 2 at an unnamed farm near Huntly, which has been put into lockdown with no animals allowed in or out.

While the disease is not directly transmitted from animal to animal, the infected cow’s four offspring have been killed as a safety precaution.

The region is home to the Aberdeen Angus, the UK’s most popular breed of beef – and meat from the area is exported across Europe and sold in all major British supermarkets.

The case was identified during routine testing of animals over four years of age that die on farms. It is the first since 2008 in Scotland, where beef exports were declared ‘risk free’ from BSE last year for the first time since 1996.

Fergus Ewing, Scotland’s rural economy secretary, said

‘Too early to say if it’s significant’

he had activated a government response plan to protect the farming industry.

In 2015, an entire herd of cows was culled when the disease was found on a farm in Carmarthenshire, South Wales. At the disease’s peak in the early 1990s, it was infecting more than 30,000 cows a year but, until yesterday, there had been only five cases in the UK since 2012.

Millions of cattle were culled during that outbreak and British beef exports were banned around the world. Professor Matthew Baylis, chairman of veterinary epidemiology at the University of Liverpool, said: ‘The epidemic of BSE in cattle in the UK is largely over but there is still the odd detected case. It is too early to say if this case is significant.’