- ROME (AP) - The Health Ministry
confirmed Italy's 108th case of mad cow disease Thursday, saying a four-year-old
cow from a breeding farm in Pordenone had tested positive.
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- Italy found its first case in cattle in 2001, after the
European Union ordered mandatory tests on cattle older than 30 months destined
for slaughter. Fifty positive cases were reported in 2001, 36 in 2002,
and 22 so far this year.
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- Last month, Italy reported its first human fatality linked
to the brain-wasting disease. A 27-year-old Sicilian woman died Aug. 6
in a Milan neurological hospital of variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease,
which experts say appears to be contracted by eating meat tainted by bovine
spongiform encephalopathy, or mad cow disease.
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- Cattle in several European countries have been infected
with the disease, and variant CJD has killed more than 100 people worldwide,
mostly Britons.
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- © The Canadian Press, 2003
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- http://www.cp.org/english/online/full/agriculture/030911/a091134A.html
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