The Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, Elena Espinosa, has appealed for calm after the disclosure that three people have now died from ‘Mad Cow’ disease and has issued assurances that there is no health threat connected with the consumption of beef.
The Director General of Health, Manuel Onorbe, has described the three deaths as ‘sporadic cases’ and the president of the College of Veterinary Medicine, Juan José Badiola, has not ruled out the possibility that more cases may occur in Spain.
Gadiola further stated that there is no cause for alarm as the deaths from ‘Mad Cow’ disease arose from past outbreaks and that current slaughterhouse procedures eliminate all contaminated material making beef ‘very safe’.
Two deaths from the human variant of ‘Mad Cow’ disease, Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD), were confirmed to have occurred in Castilla y León in December 2007 and February 2008. The third death, a woman in Madrid, occurred back in 2005.
The deaths apparently fall within the estimates made throughout Europe some eight years ago in the wake of an outbreak of the disease. The deaths in Castilla y León relate to the intake of contaminated beef prior to 2001 and at a time when there was were EU controls imposed due to the fact that the disease may take eight to ten years to develop.