May 17, 2005

BSE lab open in Bulgaria

The city of Veliko Tarnovo, north of Bulgaria, has opened a laboratory for the research of mad cow disease.

Designed to carry out diagnostics of infected cattle in the area of North East Bulgaria, the laboratory has equipment worth EUR 250,000 financed under the PHARE programme, as well as two doctors and two nurses, reported Bulgarian National Radio.

Bulgaria does not have any mad cow record so far, but a scandal broke out in August last year over an illegally imported mad cow disease test.

The Netherlands diagnosed its first known case of the human form of "mad cow disease", known as variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (vCJD), earlier in April.

vCJD is thought to be caused by eating beef products from cows infected with mad cow disease, or bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) as it is properly called.