What started Mad Cow Disease (CWD)? Was it Britain's fault?

My Dad once told me that it was cause British Farmers, under the pushings of a Government Agency, started feeding our lifestock with a mix of cheap food......

....a food mix containing lots of the offcuts, offal, entrails bones from their cousins which had been killed at the slaughterhouses/butchers..... and that nature rejected this cheap food and Mad Cow Disease was born.

He told me this long before Mad Cow Disease was actualyl diagnosed when he warned me about what I was eating - but is it right?

Your dad is right.

It was the re-introduction of brain material into the cattle's food chain that enabled the prion (protein-based) disease to mutate existing proteins into BSE.

Due to the long gestation period of the disease, the reintroduction of affected prions was prolonged, enabling the disease to become endemic in cattle populations.

Actually it is named C J D - Creuzfeld Jacob Disease. I'm not sure if it originated in Britain, but it was caused as a result of the GM ( Genetic Modification) research and development,of crops and foodstuffs - fed to animals on farms. At least, this was the general concensus, but it is not a certified fact, to my knowledge. There was, and still are, concerns that GM foods may harm humans. Apparently our foods are being messed
about with on a regular basis. There have been some cases of humans dying as a result of CJD ( yes, it is a fact that humans can contract Mad Cow Disease). Go into any library or on the web and do some research - you will be shocked and maybe scared ( or both). Governments mess with lots of things that we ( the public) are kept in the dark about, so be
very careful, what you eat - your old man is correct to some degree.

It did start in the UK

Yes Margie Thatcher was diagnosed as being one
of the lead carriers of the virus

Yes. Breitish farmers fed their cows what was essentially the remains of dead sheep.
The bits of sheep that were not used for human consumption such as the brains were processed into cattle feed.
These sheep already had a brain disease which then passed in a more virulent form to cows.
Nobody knows how many people have been infected from eating this meat as it can take as long as 30 years for the symptoms to show buta lot of people have already died.