Bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), commonly known as Mad Cow disease, is an incurable neurodegenerative disease found in cattle. One of the most prominent risk factors for infection is feeding contaminated meat and bone meal to cattle - a practice that was well-established among farmers at the time. Government regulations required farmers to report (suspected) cases; if BSE was confirmed or strongly suspected by a veterinarian, the affected animal had to be slaughtered and disposed of. Because the compensation for cattle lost that way only amounted to ~50% of the profit expected from a healthy animal, some farmers chose instead to disregard this law in an attempt to extract more use from the animal, and BSE remained in circulation, as contaminated meat was fed back to healthy cows.
The disease, initially proclaimed to not spread to humans, spread to humans and caused a variation of Creutzfeld-Jakob Disease. As of 2024, 233 cases of vCJD have been reported globally.