A case of "mad cow disease" has been identified in the body of a dead cow on a farm in Wales, the Welsh government has confirmed.
It did not enter the human food chain and authorities say there is no risk to human health.
The disease, Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE), is a fatal degenerative brain disorder.
A case of 'mad cow disease' has been identified in a dead cow on a farm in Wales
In a statement, Rebecca Evans, the Welsh Assembly's Deputy Minister for Farming and Food said the dead cow's companions and offspring had been traced and would be destroyed in line with EU rules.
She added: "Identification of this case demonstrates that the controls we have in place are working well."
Variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD) is the human form of the disease. The disease is believed to have passed from cattle to humans through consumption of meat products contaminated with BSE.
Variant CJD has been linked to the deaths of nearly 200 people in Great Britain who consumed meat from infected animals in the late 1980s. Since the link between variant CJD and BSE was discovered in 1996 there have been strict controls to prevent meat from infected cattle from entering the food chain.
There is no treatment for the disease, which is always fatal. It is characterised by loss of memory, balance and coordination, slurred speech, visual problems and blindness, abnormal jerking movements and progressive deterioration of immobility, the NHS states.
