WASHINGTON, March 17 (UPI) -- A top U.S. scientist told a group of lawmakers Wednesday all bovines slated for consumption should be tested for mad cow disease.
Congress Daily reports Stanley Prusiner, the University of California scientist who discovered the infectious agent that causes mad cow disease, told the Congressional Biomedical Research Caucus that mad cow disease is the greatest threat to the safety of the human food supply in modern times."
He is also reported as saying the human variant of the disease, Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease threatens blood supply safety around the world.
Prusiner also urged legislators to institute a steadily increasing system of universal testing because the disease can form spontaneously, noting that moves like killing downer cattle or only increasing the number of cattle tested for the disease do not remove the potential for speading the disease.
