Research pointed to eating meat contaminated with bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) as the cause.
The recommendation to move to single-use instruments came after advice from the Spongiform Encephalopathy Advisory Committee (SEAC).
In addition, scientists have been able to produce spongiform symptoms in mice injected with diseased brain matter from cows.
And in the last fifteen years, it has not had a single case of BSE (bovine spongiform encephalopathy), "mad cow disease".
However feeding animals by-products of other animals can transmit dangerous diseases to humans, including bovine spongiform encephalopathy (mad cow disease) in cows.
Last week, the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced that the first case of bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or BSE, had been found in a cow slaughtered in Washington state.
Great Britain's economy is reeling from the cumulative effect of outbreaks of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), also known as Mad Cow disease, and more recently Hoof and Mouth disease.
Eating contaminated meat or some other animal products from cattle that have bovine spongiform encephalopathy is thought to be the cause of the fatal brain disease in humans that is called variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease.
French consumption of beef plunged last year when three supermarket chains said they had sold beef from a herd containing an animal infected with bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), otherwise known as mad cow disease.
Jeffrey Almond, a microbiologist at the University of Reading, described the harrowing weekend in March 1996, when the Spongiform Encephalopathy Advisory Committee was locked away to struggle with the news that the worst had probably happened.
"A case of a single cow with bovine spongiform encephalopathy is not a reason for significant concern on the part of consumers, and there is no reason to believe the beef or milk supply is unsafe, " she said.
The decision, confirmed by a ministry press official in Brasilia, follows Egypt's ban of beef on Monday from Parana state, where a cow that died two years ago had developed atypical bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), or mad cow disease.
MSN: Saudi Arabia bans Brazil beef imports on mad cow doubts
In December 1995, Mr Hogg tried to reassure the public about the safety of beef by attempting to get experts from the Spongiform Encephalopathy Advisory Committee (SEAC) -- the government's advisory committee on mad cow disease -- to back his statements.
The ministry would also like to oversee a wider distribution of genes from the small percentage of British rams that are resistant to scrapie, a sheep disease similar to bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or mad-cow disease as it is more commonly known.
The hormone was prepared from human pituitary glands recovered from cadavers, and the absence of rigorous collection guidelines and purification procedures permitted contamination of the formulated drug with the agent that causes Creutzfeldt-Jacob disease, the human equivalent of "mad-cow disease, " or bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE).
"A case of a single cow with bovine spongiform encephalopathy is not a reason for significant concern on the part of consumers, and there is no reason to believe the beef or milk supply is unsafe, " said Sarah Klein, food safety attorney for the Center for Science in the Public Interest.
应用推荐