Spanish sanitary authorities confirmed on Tuesday the detection of a new case of mad cow disease in the municipality of Santiso, La Coruna province, in the north of the country.
Galicia's regional government, of which La Coruna is part, said in a communique the infected animal was a 49-month-old cow that had died on a rural estate, where 31 more cows are kept.
Mad cow disease, whose scientific name is bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), affects a cow's brain.
The national BSE-Reference Laboratory reported the case to the Agriculture, Fishing and Food Ministry.
The Sanity and Animal Production Laboratory of Lugo, capital of Galicia, has carried out 84,669 tests so far and found 27 positive cases in this autonomous community of Spain.
(Xinhua News Agency 10/17/2001)
