Subscribe to our newsletter. If you've listened to the news lately you've probably heard stories about foot and mouth and mad cow diseases. Sometimes the newscasters even talk about them in the same sentence, leading us to believe they are the same thing. Both are problems right now, but they are two totally different infectious diseases. BSE is the correct name for what we call mad cow disease.
Some scientists believe it is transmitted when cattle are fed products made from infected animals.
They are called 'spongiform' because brain tissue from infected animals resembles a sponge. Variations of the disease affect different animals, including sheep, cats, deer, elk, mink, and humans. The incubation period is usually slow, but since the brain is destroyed the results are always fatal. Most have been in the United Kingdom, with a smaller number of cases found throughout other European nations. The number of new cases has declined each year since being discovered.