Mad Cow Disease Kills Two in Spain

April 08, 2008 at 11:28 AM Tropical Disease News
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Two people have died in central Spain in the past three months after contracting the human form of mad cow disease in the first such fatalities in the country since 2005, the health ministry said Monday.

The two victims apparently contracted the brain-wasting disease before Spain and the European Union tightened controls on meat production in the mid-1990s following the appearance of the illness, the ministry said in a statement.

"These cases have no epidemiological consequences, that is to say, they do not put citizens' health at risk," the statement said.

Spain recorded its first and, until now, only human death from brain-wasting Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in June 2005 when a 26-year-old woman succumbed in Madrid.

More than 200 people around the world are suspected to have died, most of them in Britain, from the human variant of the disease, which was first described in 1996.

Scientists believe the disease was caused by using infected parts of cattle to make feed for other cattle.

Authorities believe eating meat from infected animals can cause the human variant of the fatal brain-wasting disease.

The 27-member EU, of which Spain is part, banned high-risk materials such as spinal cord from use in feed and tighter labeling was also introduced.

Agriculture Minister Elena Espinosa sought to convey a message of calm, saying that "we are not in the circumstances that we were many years ago.

"The meat was consumed years ago before any type of control was established, in Spain or in the European Union," she told Cadena Ser radio.

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