MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

US checking for possible “mad cow” in Iowa.

US Agriculture Department will be making further tests following the first possible case of “mad cow” disease apparently detected in a single animal in Iowa.

Initial testing on the animal produced “inconclusive” results and US DA' chief veterinarian John Clifford said that “this is not at all unexpected. Screening tests are designed to be extremely sensitive”.

Since June the US government is using rapid testing kits to spot potential disease carriers and apparently "sometimes they can produce falsely positive results".

"The animal in question didn't enter the food chain", said Dr. Clifford who did admit that a further test of brain tissues from the animal will be done in DA laboratory in Iowa. Results should be known in a week's time.

However US officials refused to give more details since "the test may very well turn out to be negative, and we're not going to disclose information about the type of animal or the farm involved".

A week ago in south Florida a woman died because of "mad cow" disease, the only case so far reported in the US. Apparently Charlene Singh, 25, contracted Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, CJD, the human version of Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy, BSE, a decade ago in Britain, where the family comes from.

The first case of BSE in the US was found in December 2003 in Washington State which it is believed was infected by contaminated feed animal from Canada. The discovery triggered a cessation of virtually all foreign exports of US beef.

BSE has been linked to CJD which causes paralysis and death in humans.

World Health Organization statistics indicate that 139 people have been diagnosed with CJD since it first emerged in Britain nine years ago of which most have died.