Mad cow disease may have originated from animal feed contaminated with human remains floated downriver in Indian funerals, British scientists claim, in an interview in The Lancet.Professor Alan Colchester of the University of Kent in England says the disease, also known as bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), may have been caused by animal bones and other tissue imported from India for animal feed, which also may have contained the remains of humans infected with Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD).BSE and CJD are illnesses caused by brain proteins that transform themselves into infectious agents.Scientists said the risk of a load of animal by-products being infected with human material would be very small. But importing animal material went on for decades, so the cumulative risk could become significant over time.‘‘A large amount of imported animal feeding material was brought into Britain during the period when BSE must first have occurred. The largest source coming to the UK was from the Indian subcontinent,’’ Colchester said. —Reuters
