Journal of Veterinary Diagnostic Investigation 24(5) 976 –980 © 2012 The Author(s) Reprints and permission:

A major concern in food and animal feed production is the potential contamination with transmissible spongiform encephalopathies (TSE), fatal neurological diseases caused by a rogue isoform of the prion protein (PrPsc).9,22 The out-break of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) in Europe during the 1980s and 1990s remains the most significant event of a prion disease in agriculture. In the United King-dom, hundreds of thousands of cattle were confirmed as BSE positive, and millions of preclinical animals are thought to have entered the human food chain.19 Classical BSE can be transmitted from bovine to humans in the form of variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease via consumption of PrPsc-infected bovine tissues.4,13,19 Since this link was made, many coun-tries have implemented active surveillance for BSE as a means of disease control and determining prevalence.11,1