BSE: The Gathering Crisis Available to Purchase

Evidence for the spread of the agent responsible for Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE) continues to accrue. Hopes that the ban on feeding concentrates to cattle in July 1988 would result in the resolution of the epidemic have not been fulfilled, since the number of BSE cases continues to rise. It is proposed that the infective agent of BSE is primarily a cattle pathogen, perhaps initially spread by contaminated feed, but in recent years propagated chiefly by maternal(vertical) transmission with variable manifestation of the clinical disease. If this is correct, the implications for farming, and possibly also for human health, are grave.