Theory: Mad Cows Fed Human Remains

(London) The British medical journal The Lancet has published a scientific hypothesis that mad cow disease originated because human remains were fed to cattle in the 1960s and 1970s. A team of scientists led by Alan Colchester, a professor of neuroscience at the University of Kent, contend that Britain imported massive amounts of bones and carcass parts for fertilizer and animal feed from Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan and human bones were included.

From CNN.com:

"In India and Pakistan, gathering large bones and carcasses from the land and from rivers has long been an important local trade for peasants," the scientists wrote. "Collectors encounter considerable quantities of human as well as animal remains as a result of religious customs."

The scientists assert that the inclusion of human remains in animal bone material exported from the Indian subcontinent has been documented.

It appears that the theorists have given everybody something to chew on. I wonder if any other country imported animal feed supplements from the Indian subcontinent. If Britain was doing it, it seems possible that some other countries would have done the same thing. If so, the theory is challenged by the fact that all mad cow cases seem to be traceable back to Britain.