U.S. plans to scale back mad cow surveillance

"It's not cost-effective; it's not necessary," Weber said. "The consumers we've done focus groups with are comfortable that this is a very rare disease and we've got safeguards in place."

He mentioned government protections to keep the disease from the food chain for people or animals.

"All those things add up to safety," he said.

The department mostly tests older cows with symptoms of the disease. Infected cows can show signs of nervous system disorder, such as aggression, lack of coordination, inability to walk or abnormal posture. In the latest case, the cow couldn't walk. It was a "downer," another sign of the disease. Dead cows are also suspect.

Tests are done on brain tissue from cows, so animals must be killed before they can be tested. There is no test for the disease in a live animal.

Since June 2004, the department has tested 652,697 cows for the disease. The nation has about 95 million cattle.

The medical name for mad cow disease is bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or BSE. In humans, eating meat contaminated with BSE is linked to variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease, a rare and deadly nerve disease.

An outbreak in the United Kingdom killed more than 180,000 cows and was blamed for more than 150 human deaths. It began in 1986 and spread throughout Europe, peaking in 1993.

The first American case appeared 10 years later in Washington state in a Canadian-born cow. The disease was found again last June in a Texas cow.

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