I got here on the internet while searching for natural beef burgers in the Seattle area. A point not mentioned in this article about mad cow disease is that cases of death due to "dementia" are rarely (if ever) autopsied. Since the symptoms of mad cow disease are exactly the same as "dementia", it is unknown how many cases of mad cow in humans there have actually been in the US. It should also be pointed out that the beef industry, like all big corporate businesses, really only care about profit and lobby for slack in the standards supposedly held to by the USDA. In fact, violations of standards in the beef slaughtering industry are often not followed up by the USDA inspectors. Hidden camera footage shows "downer" (so sick they can't stand up) cows are still being slaughtered for human food purposes. And don't blame the Canadian beef industry -- the North American "herd" is crossing the border all the time. Where mad cow originates is not the issue. The issue is that it is still here and it is still being hushed by the meat industry. That's why I switched to only naturally raised and exclusively slaughtered beef back when the first mad cow was reported in the US.