I generally would not post about this subject but unfortunately it falls into two categories.  #1  Media falsehoods, and #2 I worked an internship mid 1980’s for SmithKline
Just an fyi, the media is hyping up a story about a singular dairy bovine diagnosed with Mad Cow Disease or BSE (Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy).

In the mid 1980’s I worked an internship with SmithKline Animal Laboratories in Westchester Pennsylvania (Hi Tilda).   Eventually SmithKline merged with British firm Beecham, and later with Glaxo to become GlaxoSmithKline.
The primary function of the animal laboratory at the time I was there was seeking an inoculation for Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE) which many years later became known as Mad Cow Disease.
There were literally hundreds of heads of cattle in various stages of Mad Cow roaming quietly amid the compound.  HUNDREDS.   On Fridays they would burn the deceased carcuses in an industrial incinerator, and the stink was horrific.
The reason for this post is merely to point out that Mad Cow has been in the United States for decades, regardless of what you are told by the media.  I used to sit on a bench and watch the poor cows stumble around the fields as the disease worsened.  It was sad, but unfortunately in the interest of intellectual honesty I must admit it was also a little comical.
The disease was created by farmers using BGH (Bovine Growth Hormone) on cattle herds to speed up the growth rate of their inventory.  It was a standard practice for many years.  Unfortunately the growth hormone had a significant cost if the injected cattle died as a consequence of natural herd mortality.   They wasted the BGH injection(s).
It was not the injection, or the BGH per se, but what the farmers did with the deceased cows that made the problem occur.   Some frustrated farmers who spent the money on the cow only to have it die from natural mortality rates, decided to reconstitute the hormone by grinding up the carcus and mixing it back into the feed for the remaining herd.   It sounded like it made sense on paper to attempt to recapture the hormone cost, however it had major unintended consequences.

Cows are not carnivores, and the introduction of excessive beef protein into their grain feed created the  neurological condition that eventually became a pathogenic disease.  Hence Bovine Spongiform encephalopathy was created.
Once the determination was made that an inoculation/vaccine would not be possible, and the behavioral tracing eventually led to discovery of cause, farmers were instructed never to reconstitute their herds into feed.  Ruminant mammalian protein reconstitution was eventually banned by the FDA in 1997.    Hoofed mammals were banned from being introduced into the feed source of other ruminant mammals.
So when you hear the media sounding alarm bells of a singular event, take it with a grain of salt and cook raw ground beef to an internal temperature of 160 degrees and there is nothing to worry about ever.

Mad Cow has been in the United States since at least 1984, and in significant quantities too.  It went away when ruminant reconstitution was banned from feed.
This farmer, with this dairy cow, is gonna be in big trouble.

Learn the weirdest things on the Treehouse huh?