Have you heard of MAD COW Disease??

MOO!! I bet almost everyone does! Not because it is COMMON, but because of its outbreak in countries such as Europe, Britain, U.S.A, Canada and Japan. In 1986, the first occurrence of mad cow disease took placed in England. The scientific name for Mad Cow Disease is bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), a progressive neurological disorder of cattle which can be transmitted to other species, including human beings. The disease is so named as it causes the brain of the victim to degenerate into a sponge-like consistency.
The actual cause of BSE is still unknown, however, it is generally accepted by the scientific community that the likely cause is infectious forms of a type of protein, prions, normally found in animals cause BSE. In cattle with BSE, these abnormal prions initially occur in the small intestines and tonsils, after which are found in central nervous tissues, such as the brain and spinal cord as well as other tissues of infected animals experiencing later stages of the disease.