It was bad enough when anyone having a burger at McDonald's had to fuss over whether exposure to mad cow disease might eventually lead to their own brain short-circuiting. Experts say humans face no health threat from exposure to the virus that affects cloven-hoofed animals such as cattle, sheep, pigs and goats. For example, there was a major outbreak in Britain in 1967 and the only person who got sick had nothing worse than flu symptoms. But expert advice aside, a lot of people aren't so sure, giving them one more reason to avoid meat. The seismic shift in attitudes toward eating is so profound, it has even had a major impact on Berlin's most famous monument to fine eating, the palatial department store known as KaDeWe, for Kaufhaus des Westens.
People are very careful about what kind of food and meat they buy.
So is KaDeWe. Even Prince Charles has joined the effort to combat the spread of the disease. Last week the disease was also detected in France among dairy cattle near a farm that had imported sheep from Britain. The disease may have spread to Germany, too. There have been five suspected cases so far this month, including the possible infection of 6,000 pigs on a farm in Thuringia.