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# don't panic
Norway detects "probable" case of mad cow disease
The strain of the disease is different to the one found during the British 1990s epidemic.
NORWAY SAID TODAY it had detected a “probable” case of mad cow disease but urged consumers not to panic as it may not be the same variant as the British 1990s epidemic.
A second positive test for bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) on a 15-year-old cow reinforced suspicions that it had mad cow disease, the Norwegian Veterinary Institute said.
“We have a likely and strong suspicion of a possible variant of BSE,” Bjoern Roethe Knudtsen of the Food and Safety Authority told public broadcaster NRK.
The authorities however said there was a distinction between the type of BSE caused by cows eating meat-based feed — banned in Europe since 2001 after the British epidemic — and an atypical version which has sporadically appeared in older cows in several European countries in recent years.
A definitive diagnosis can only be made by a European reference laboratory in Britain.
“We take this seriously and we are handling it as if our suspicion were confirmed,” Food and Safety Authority official Solfrid Aamdal said in a statement.
The authority stressed that “more and more” BSE cases in Europe are of the atypical kind and that beef and milk consumption remains safe.
The cow’s carcass, from a farm in west-central Norway, was destroyed and safety measures put in place for the rest of the herd.
