As I understand it the biggest thing with mad-cow was not so much eating cow brains itself, but that these cows were also fed meal containing beef nervous tiss

As I understand it the biggest thing with mad-cow was not so much eating cow brains itself, but that these cows were also fed meal containing beef nervous tissue.. So, from an uninformed opinion, it could be that the disease develops or builds more rapidly in cases of 'cannibalism' (e.g. humans eating human as here, cow eating cow as in UK, etc), and then once developed can spread more easily across species.. side note: Having lived >6mo in the UK during a certain period of time, I'm ineligible to be a blood donor in the USA to this day due to the mad-cow outbreak.