World Crises Reuters.com
Thu 22 Jun 2006. AMSTERDAM, June 22 (Reuters) - A second Dutch person has been diagnosed with the human variant of mad cow disease after a woman died from the disease last year, Dutch health authorities said on Thursday.
The Dutch Institute for Health and Environment (RIVM) did not disclose any further details to protect the privacy of the patient. It said in a statement that the person most probably got infected by eating contaminated meat products. A 26-year-old Dutch woman, who had been diagnosed with the brain wasting Creutzfeldt-Jakob (vCJD) disease -- the human form of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) -- died in May 2005.
Over 150 cases of vCJD have been reported around the world, mostly in Britain, but also in France, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Canada and the United States.
The disease is fatal and incurable. It is thought to be caused by eating food tainted with material from cattle with BSE, a progressive neurological disorder.
The Netherlands has imposed stricter restrictions on blood donation over concerns about the transmission of vCJD.
Mad cow disease first emerged in Britain in the 1980s and forced the destruction of millions of cattle.
The Netherlands is one of the world's biggest exporters of meat and dairy products and its livestock sector has undergone major intensification in the past few years, with most animals raised on specialised farms.
The country has suffered a series of animal disease crises in the past decade, including swine fever, foot-and-mouth and bird flu, leading to the culling of millions of animals.
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