Mad Cow Disease

What Is Mad Cow Disease?

Mad cow disease is an incurable, fatal brain disease that affects cattle and possibly some other animals, such as goats and sheep. The medical name for mad cow disease is bovine spongiform encephalopathy (pronounced: bo-vine spun-jih-form en-seh-fah-la-puh-thee), or BSE for short.

It's called mad cow disease because it affects a cow's nervous system, causing a cow to act strangely and lose control of its ability to do normal things, such as walk.

How Do People Get It?

Only certain animals can get BSE — people don't actually get mad cow disease. However, experts have found a link between BSE and a rare brain condition that affects people, called variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD). Researchers believe that people who eat beef from cows that have BSE are at risk of developing a form of vCJD.