Doctors in Kentucky say eating squirrel brains is linked to Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (better known as mad-cow disease).
But the White House is preoccupied by bioterrorism and mad-cow disease: and it wants to trim the budget deficit.
ECONOMIST: Another cow disease with a possible link to humans
Maybe mad-cow disease and its human analogues are merely the unfortunate by-products of some crucial, but as yet unperceived, mechanism.
And this came against a backdrop of the mad-cow disease scare in the US, which put many consumers off eating beef.
BSE, or mad-cow disease, no longer posed a problem, though Germany disagreed.
Since ministers flatly denied there was any danger to people from mad-cow disease, Britain's government and press have been jumpy about public health.
And when it comes to bungled slaughters, Hong Kong's embarrassments seem trifling compared with Britain's over its cattle-culling attempts to control mad-cow disease.
The extinction of elephants, the threat of mad-cow disease, outbreaks of the Ebola virus, and chemicals that mimic sex hormones are all fashionable.
In the wake of mad-cow disease, many student cafeterias and even a few mid-priced restaurants are joining gourmets in the switch to organic fare.
Mad-cow disease is clearly no respecter of national boundaries: cattle and cattle-feed are traded (and cows sometimes actually walk) across borders in the Union.
But some patients are too allergic to tolerate the stuff, and others too squeamish, in the wake of mad-cow disease, to want it under their skin.
Some weeks ago, the government's scientists advised it that the deadly human equivalent of mad-cow disease might be transmitted through beef bones, although the risks were tiny.
Japan is especially reluctant to do so, as was illustrated by a recent spat over American beef, in which fears of mad-cow disease strengthened the hands of protectionists.
Last year she snapped up a new brief for food safety, created after the commission found itself embarrassingly ill equipped to deal with the problems of mad-cow disease.
ECONOMIST: Emma Bonino, Europe��s commissioner for the future
The big worry is predators, such as coyotes and nightmares such as foot-and-mouth disease (though the spotlight this summer was on Texan cattlemen in their battle against a case of mad-cow disease).
The ministry would also like to oversee a wider distribution of genes from the small percentage of British rams that are resistant to scrapie, a sheep disease similar to bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or mad-cow disease as it is more commonly known.
The hormone was prepared from human pituitary glands recovered from cadavers, and the absence of rigorous collection guidelines and purification procedures permitted contamination of the formulated drug with the agent that causes Creutzfeldt-Jacob disease, the human equivalent of "mad-cow disease, " or bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE).
In December 1995, Mr Hogg tried to reassure the public about the safety of beef by attempting to get experts from the Spongiform Encephalopathy Advisory Committee (SEAC) -- the government's advisory committee on mad cow disease -- to back his statements.
Australia barred British beef and by-products in 1996 as concerns mounted that mad cow disease could be linked to the fatal human condition, new variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (vCJD).
McDonald's (nyse: MCD - news - people) will post first-quarter and full-year earnings below Wall Street expectations, largely because mad-cow, a degenerative neurological disease that can infect humans who eat tainted beef, has scared Europeans away from the company's beef.
The WHO expressed concern about what it called "exposure worldwide" to mad cow disease and its fatal human form, new variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (vCJD).
One unexpected revelation was that France had offered to consider allowing beef from Scotland to be imported again where grass-fed herds could be shown never to had any contact with BSE or mad cow disease.
However feeding animals by-products of other animals can transmit dangerous diseases to humans, including bovine spongiform encephalopathy (mad cow disease) in cows.
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