Livestock officials in Bangkok, however, said it was unlikely because imports of animal feed from countries hit by the disease had been banned. We do not use much meal and bone meal in animal feed to feed cattle.
Contaminated feed is believed to be at the root of mad cow disease.
The brain-wasting illness can be passed on to humans through eating infected beef. At least 80 people have died in Europe from new-variant Creutzfeld Jakob disease, the human variant of mad cow. Britain banned the feeding of crushed animal carcasses to cattle in 1986 but exported much of its stock of feed to Europe and beyond until a decade later, when the trade ended. The countries that stick out because they were importing animal feed at the height of our epidemic in the 1990s are Indonesia, India, Thailand, Taiwan and Sri Lanka.