Mad Cow Disease

President Jacques Chirac urged drastic new precautions against mad cow disease, and a top health official predicted that more people will die as France's proud culinary tradition took a hammering. Chirac called on the government to suspend immediately the use of meat and bone meal in all animal feed amid growing anxiety about the spread of the cattle illness.

A laboratory here is one of a few facilities nationwide that has been certified to conduct newly approved rapid testing for mad cow disease. The U.S. Department of Agriculture selected the California Animal Health and Food Safety Laboratory System, headquartered at UC Davis, to conduct tests that check for the brain-wasting disease in just a few hours.

A French teenager believed to have been suffering from the human variant of "mad cow" disease has died after slowly losing the ability to walk, speak and breathe. Arnaud Eboli, 19, died after fighting the brain-wasting ailment for more than two years, according to the Assn. of Victims of Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease. "He died in appalling conditions. He looked like an old man," his mother said.

French government scientists said Thursday that they transmitted mad cow disease to monkeys and later found that the diseased primate brain tissue bore a striking resemblance to brain tissue from recent human victims of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease.

Researchers have for the first time made a prion in the laboratory and used it to demonstrate that the misfolded proteins are indeed the sole cause of mad cow disease, the American and German scientists said Thursday.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture, responding to a critical report, defended its testing program for mad cow disease Tuesday, saying the surveillance plan that went into effect June 1 targets "precisely the population of animals we should be testing." The draft report, prepared by the USDA's Office of Inspector General and released by Rep. Henry A.

Four states will begin tracking a mysterious brain illness in Americans as a precaution after Britain's mad cow disease scare. Doctors at the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta said there is no sign that Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease is occurring more frequently among Americans. Nor has mad cow disease been detected in the United States. Surveillance of the illness will begin immediately in Minnesota, California, Connecticut and Oregon, the disease center announced.

Federal agents trying to prevent so-called mad cow disease from gaining a foothold in the United States seized a second flock of Vermont sheep Friday as protesters mockingly gave the Nazi salute. "They were stolen from our farm today," owner Larry Faillace said. The 126 sheep were loaded into a truck bound for Iowa, where they will be destroyed and their brains tested for mad cow disease. The truck was briefly blocked by protesters before it left.

The government reported Spain's first case of "mad cow" disease Wednesday and said it is investigating a second possible case. Tests by government veterinarians in the northwestern Galicia region revealed a confirmed case of mad cow disease, known scientifically as bovine spongiform encephalopathy, late Wednesday morning, Agriculture Minister Miguel Arias Canete said. He said Spanish authorities sent samples of the second animal to British experts for further analysis.