Scientists confirm 'mad cow disease' in camels sparking fears it could be passed to humans

A prion disease similar to that which causes “mad cow disease”  in cattle has been discovered in camels, raising fears that it could be passed to humans.

A study published in the journal of Emerging Infectious Disease by an international team of food safety scientists and veterinarians confirmed the fatal degenerative disease in camels in Algeria and called for urgent action to safeguard both animal and human health.

“Our identification of this prion disease in a geographically widespread livestock species requires urgent enforcement of surveillance and assessment of the potential risks to human and animal health,” say the authors.

The source of the infection is not known but the paper says it is possible the disease came from exports of BSE-infected cattle.

“The possibility that BSE-infected feed could have reached North Africa cannot be ruled out”, the paper says.

Dromedary – or "Arabian" – camels number more than 10 million worldwide. Although best known in the west as pack animals, they are a major source of meat and milk in Africa and much of the Middle East.

Camel stews, sausages and even burgers are a common and important part of the human diet in countries as diverse as Sudan, Saudi Arabia and China.

Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson was presented with a platter of grilled camel while on a trade mission in Abu Dhabi in 2013, sharing a picture of the meal on social media.

Gabriele Vaccari, one of the study’s authors and head of the Emerging Zoonosis Operative Unit of the Istituto Superiore di Sanità in Rome, said they had first been alerted to disease in camels when Algerian researchers observed symptoms in the animals reminiscent of  other prion diseases such as those displayed by British cattle suffering from bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) or "mad cow" disease.

Laboratory tests positively confirmed Camel Prion Disease (CPD) in three animals, suggesting the disease was present in 3.1 per cent of the camel population presented for slaughter at the local abattoir.

Mr Vaccari said that there was as yet “no evidence” that the disease could be passed from animals to humans.

He added: “Some prion diseases like scrapie in sheep do not appear to move from animal to human populations but others like BSE in cattle do. At the moment we do not know if this disease in camels can cross the the human species barrier. More work and surveillance is needed”.

Surveillance of animal populations for prion diseases has been a major concern of health security officials around the world ever since the BSE was first identified in UK cattle in 1986, causing the animals head tremors, weight loss and lack of coordination.

BSE only became a full blown crisis some 10 years later when it was established the disease had jumped to humans in the form of the aggressive degenerative disease, Variant Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease (vCJD), and the first known victim, 19-year-old Stephen Churchill, died on May 21 1995.

A worldwide ban was placed on all British beef exports and more than 4.4 million animals were slaughtered, costing the British economy an estimated £5 billion and killing more than 200 people worldwide, including 177 in Britain. 

An official inquiry into the crisis found that Government had tried to "sedate" public concerns about mad cow disease in the run up to the crisis.

Presenting the findings to Parliament, the then Agriculture Minister, Nick Brown, said:  "The government at the time was preoccupied with preventing an alarmist over-reaction to BSE. Their campaign of reassurance was a mistake”.

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