°A
fatal, neurodegenerative disease of cattle, which is transmissible to humans through misshaped
prion proteins, caused by eating infected
tissues.
"The outbreaks of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (mad cow disease) have limited some traditional uses of cattle for food, for example the eating of brains or spinal cords."
synonyms:
mad cow disease, variant creutzfeldt-jakob disease