ROME, Feb 7 (AFP) - The recent cases of mad cow disease reported in North America, as well as the unique case detected in a goat in France, are "isolated incidents" and no cause for alarm, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said Monday.
The few cases of Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE), or mad cow disease, in cattle in Canada and the United States "should not cause panic among consumers and producers," the United Nations food agency said in a statement.
"The three cases in Canada and the one case in the US from an imported animal are isolated incidents," said Andrew Speedy, an FAO animal production expert. He added that the cases were detected because of testing procedures that are now in place.
BSE, which was first diagnosed in cattle in the United Kingdom in 1986, is a fatal disease characterized by degeneration of the central nervous system. BSE is thought to be transmitted by the animals eating feed containing BSE-infected meat and bone meal.
The goat diagnosed with BSE in France was "the first food animal other than cattle to contract the disease naturally," the FAO said. It was thought that sheep and goats were only affected by scrapie which can be distinguished from BSE and is not thought to be transmissable to humans.
The FAO called it " one example in millions" and said that "the goat was born before Europe imposed a total ban on feeding (meat and bone meal) to livestock in January 2001."
Western European countries experienced a significant number of BSE cases in 2001-2002, but the disease is now in decline. There have been some cases reported in Eastern Europe, including one last week in Poland, as well as in Israel and Japan.
Scientists believe that BSE causes variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (vCJD) in humans who have eaten contaminated beef from infected cattle. In the last 10 years, 148 people have died from the variant form of the human disease, almost all of them in Britain. The recent case in Japan was a person who had visited Britain.
02/07/2005 17:02 GMT - AFP