From:
AFERRETVET@cs.com
Date: 2001-04-27 07:51:00 UTC
Subject: Re: [Ferret-Health-list]RE: Mad cow disease
There are actually 7 diseases which are classified as
sponigiform encephalopathies. Scrapie in sheep and goats,
bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE or "Mad Cow Disease") in
cattle, transmissible mink encephalopathy (TME), chronic wasting
disease
(CWD) in elk and deer, kuru, familial insomnia, and
Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease
(CJD) in humans.
Scrapie, TME, CWD, and CJD have all been reported here in the US.
Plus TME has been shown to be infectious to ferrets in an
experimentally
setting. Most of the pet foods use chicken and/or fish as the
protein source,
so mad cow disease should not be a problem. Plus mad cow disease has
not been reported here in the US.
Hope that clears things up,
Jerry Murray, DVM