WASHINGTON, June 11 (UPI) -- A Texas cow has tested positive for bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or mad cow disease, the U.S. Department of Agriculture reported.
Last fall, the animal was given a clean bill of health, but after it died in November a second test for the brain-wasting mad cow disease came back with a "weak positive," USDA Secretary Mike Johanns said at a news conference Friday night.
Another sample will be sent to the world's top BSE lab in Weybridge, England, for a final test, the Washington Post reported Saturday.
Johanns stressed people do not face any greater health risk from eating beef because meat from the animal did not enter the human food chain or the beef feed chain.
While the first U.S. mad cow case in 2003 involved an animal born and raised largely in Canada and then shipped to Washington state, USDA chief veterinarian John Clifford said the agency had no information that the possible second case was "an imported animal."
