The Dutch authorities are on alert.
On Wednesday, the government announced that a case of bovine spongiform encephalopathy, ie "mad cow disease", potentially fatal to humans, was identified on the carcass of a cow with Netherlands.
The infected cow "has not entered the food chain and does not pose a food safety problem", assured the Minister of Agriculture Piet Adema.
The eight-year-old animal was affected by an "atypical" variant of the disease.
The "classic" form of the disease is spread by animal meal contained in cattle feed if it is contaminated by one or more carcasses of sick animals.
The “atypical” form, which would pose less of a risk for humans, occurs sporadically in older animals.
The Netherlands reported the last case of the “atypical” variant in 2011.
A dozen cattle will be slaughtered
This bovine disease can cause in humans, by ingestion of meat or offal, Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, a fatal neurodegenerative syndrome.
The Dutch services have isolated the farm concerned, in the province of South Holland, but whose exact location has not been made public, and are looking for the source of the infection, said the minister.
Any cattle that have come into contact with the sick cow or shared the same feed is tested, slaughtered, and its carcass destroyed, according to the same source.
"A total of 13 cattle have been found, they will be slaughtered and tested," according to the Ministry of Agriculture.
Mad cow disease first emerged in Britain in the 1980s and has spread to many countries in Europe and the rest of the world, causing a crisis in the beef industry.
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