An interesting thing about mad cow disease, is that deer also get this disease and are infected by it, perhaps from licking each other or from licking excretions from each other in their environment. This first occurred in enclosed deer farms and it was shown that even if you completely clean and bleach the entire farm and put unaffected, unexposed deer a couple of years later into this environment, they can still get the disease. The disease is caused by getting the mutated protein into the blood stream, so it is possible that cows might also be able to transmit the disease to one another much more easily than people think. lf cow parts are fed to chickens (which they are), then the chicken waste fed to cows (which they are), then cows might get it in this manner. Also, the cows might not have ANY symptoms when they are slaughtered to produce meat because there is a fairly long incubation time with the disease.

Anna