AFTER years of ignoring warnings that mad cows were probably lurking in their
herds, Germany and Spain both admitted last week that they have found
native-born cases of BSE. The admissions came days after the European Union
announced BSE tests across the continent to reveal the true extent of the
epidemic.
As New Scientist went to press, one cow in Spain’s north-western
region of Galicia had been diagnosed with BSE, and another was suspected. An
abattoir in the German state of Schleswig-Holstein, which was voluntarily
conducting BSE tests, discovered infection in one cow. And a cow exported from
another German…
