Euthenasia of a BSE-infected cow. BSE (bovine spongiform encephalopathy), or insmad cowins disease, progressively destroys the brains of infected cattle. The disease first appeared around 1985 and, so far, has only been identified in Britain. It is thought to have arisen from a similar disease, scrapie, which infects sheep & goats and to have been transmitted to cattle via processed feed containing infected sheep carcasses. The infective agent responsible for BSE is a virus- like organism known as a prion. Similar diseases affecting humans include Kuru, Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease & Gerstmann-Straussler syndrome.