Two days before Christmas 2003, the United States Department of Agriculture announced some terrifying news: The nation's first case of Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE) had been confirmed in a cow in Washington State.

Almost immediately after, farms were quarantined, beef was recalled, and new feeding and slaughter protocols for cows in the U.S. were put in place as the USDA scrambled to halt the spread of the disease.

The USDA took swift action—because they had to. Less than ten years earlier, in January 1993, BSE was infecting 1,000 new cows each week in the United Kingdom, causing other countries to ban the import of British meat and forcing farmers to slaughter over three million cattle. In all, the cost of BSE to the taxpayers in the UK topped 4 billionpounds.

BSE—more commonly referred to as “mad cow disease”—is a progressive neurological disease that affects cows. Although the exact mechanism of infection isn't completely known, experts say that cows consume infectious agents, called prions, which then damages the central nervous system. After an incubation period of several years, an infected cow will have trouble walking or standing, then will start to act nervous or aggressive (hence the name “mad cow”).

Because of a strong defense by the USDA and American government, the United States has been home to only a handful of cases of BSE since 2003. And after the height of the outbreak in 1993, the UK was able to curb the spread of disease by exterminating infected cattle and instituting new feeding practices for their livestock.

It was feeding