Dr. Man-Sun Sy, an immunologist at CWRU, agreed. Sy is part of a team of the world's top disease prevention scientists developing a test that will allow cattle to be checked without being killed. The test, which is in preliminary development, would provide more information than current tests. It is always fatal. No cases of mad cow disease have been found in the United States, though it has been confirmed in 31 other countries.
Humans can contract a number of mad cow-type diseases.
Another, Creutzfeld-Jakob disease, is transmitted genetically or develops for reasons that scientists can't determine. A third, chronic wasting disease, comes from eating infected elk and deer. There have been a number of cases of this in the United States and Canada. Although the United States is doing far less testing of cattle than the European Union, U.S. testing exceeds the international standard for a country with no known cases of mad cow disease, said Dr. Linda Detwiler, a senior staff veterinarian with the federal government. However, she confirmed that quarantined sheep in Vermont were infected with either mad cow or scrapie, a variation of the disease found in sheep.