document: GOVERNMENT veterinary and health experts were yesterday putting out reassuring messages about bovine spongiform encephalopathy -LRB- BSE -RRB- , or ` mad cow ' disease , in the face of growing public anxiety . Dr Kenneth Calman , the government 's chief medical officer , yesterday repeated the official advice that beef can be eaten safely : ` There is no scientific evidence of a causal link between BSE in cattle and CJD in humans . ' One cause of concern is that the number of cases is continuing to rise , in spite of forecasts from the Ministry of Agriculture that the incidence of cases would peak last year and then decline rapidly . Farmers reported 8,581 animals with BSE during the first nine weeks of this year compared with 8,099 in the same period last year . Another fear is that BSE could cause illness in humans . It was revealed this week that Mr Peter Warhurst , a dairy farmer whose herd had a BSE case in 1989 , died last year of Creutzfeld-Jacob disease . Both BSE and CJD are caused by mysterious particles of infectious protein called prions . Dr Robert Will of Western General Hospital , Edinburgh , who is monitoring all CJD cases in the UK for the Department of Health , drew attention to Mr Warhurst 's case without naming him in the Lancet , a medical journal . He says he now regrets writing to the Lancet because of the unnecessary alarm caused . Statistical analysis , taking account of the average national incidence of CJD and the number of people working on BSE-affected dairy farms , shows that the probability of one CJD case having occurred among the latter group by chance is about 1 in 20 . Even so , Dr Will believes that Mr Warhurst 's disease was a coincidence not related to BSE exposure . His study has shown no change in the pattern of CJD since BSE started and no other cases among people working with cattle , such as abattoir staff or vets .
extractive_keyphrases: bse case cjd cases bovine spongiform encephalopathy infectious protein scientific evidence public anxiety causal link
abstractive_keyphrases: mad cow disease