Epidemics- Mad Cow Disease(bovine spongiform encephalopathy)

Another epidemic that impacted Singapore is the Mad Cow Disease, also known as bovine spongiform encephalopathy. It attacks the cow's nervous system and causes strange behavior in them. The pictorial source shows a cow affected by Mad Cow Disease. As seen from the source, the infected cows were unable to stand or walk. Although humans cannot contract Mad Cow Disease, there is another brain disease closely linked to it, the variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease, that affects humans. People with this disease will lose control of their mental and physical state. People could contract this by eating beef infected with Mad Cow Disease. Symptoms include depression, anxiety, muscle spasms, poor memory and unsteadiness. In the end, the person will die as there is no known cure.

In the mid 1980s, cows in Britain suffered an outbreak of Mad Cow Disease.The cows had gotten it from meal made from infected animals. About 750,000 cows infected with Mad Cow Disease went into hamburgers, sausages and other meat products. Over the next few years, cases of variant CJD surfaced in Britain. Soon after, other European countries' cows were also affected, as they did not restrict the meal that had first infected the cows in Britain. In 2001, the disease spread to Asia, Japan.

Singapore and many other countries stopped importing beef from Britain,US, Ireland, Germany, Denmark,Canada,Japan and other infected countries. Many countries turned to safer sources such as New Zealand and Australia for beef. The surge in demand from these sources caused a rise in beef prices. Thus, although the Mad Cow Disease epidemic did not actuallly come to Singapore, we still felt its impact through the high beef prices. People who especially enjoy eating certain types of beef such as Japanese beef were affected more as that beef were unavailable due to the suspension of import from many places. In conclusion, despite the disease not reaching Singapore, it still left an impact in the form of higher beef prices and lesser variety of beef.