Austria has announced its first case of BSE.
Discovered within the country's routine testing programme, the case was found in a middle-sized farm in Gmuend in Lower Austria. The 70-month-old cow involved was immediately destroyed, along with the rest of the herd, the BBC reports.
A spokeswoman for the Austrian Embassy in London said it was not yet clear how the cow had become infected. Various routes were being looked at, she said, including the possibility of illegal foodstuff being used. The infected cow was born and reared in Austria, and the country banned the feeding of meat and bone meal products to cattle more than a decade ago.
This first positive result, confirmed by Britain's Central Veterinary Laboratory in Weybridge, is out of the 217,660 tests carried out this year in Austria. With Finland also announcing its first case of BSE in the past few days, Sweden is now the only EU country not to have reported a case of BSE.