Mad Cow Disease Found in Alabama- GA in the Clear

MJ Kneiser

A case of mad cow disease has been found in a cow in Alabama.

U.S. Department of Agriculture scientists confirmed Tuesday that an 11-year-old cow found in an Alabama livestock market suffered from the neurologic cattle disease, formally called bovine spongiform encephalopathy.

In Georgia there are almost 18,000 producers of beef cattle including here in Stephens and surrounding counties.

Will Bentley is the Executive Vice President of the Georgia Cattlemen’s Association.

Bentley said Georgia cattle farmers should not have to worry about any outbreak of mad cow disease here.

“It should not cause any concern for cattle in the state of Georgia,” said Bentley. “The animal was showing clinical signs of atypical BSE and they were found through routine surveillance. That’s the good news, there wasn’t any type of scare or outbreak. They caught it when the animal came in and were able to isolate it and take care of the animal there.”

Bentley said the strain of Mad Cow found in the cow in Alabama was not the same as the strain that infected humans in Europe in the 1980’s.

Additionally, he said the disease strain found in the cow was not contagious to either other cows or humans.

Bentley said the Georgia Department of Agriculture has a protocol in place to prevent any kind of disease in cattle from getting to the public.

“That was in Alabama and the way it works specifically here in Georgia is there are Department of Agriculture inspectors and every auction market, they’re there to check animals as they’re checked in, so they’re giving them a routine surveillance to make sure they don’t see any types of signs or concerns and luckily, this was caught as the animal was coming in and we believe our system in Georgia would be strong enough to do the same.”

Because cattle are raised in all 159 counties of Georgia, the beef industry has a large impact on the state’s economy (estimated at more than $2 billion).