Spain reports 2 deaths from human form of mad cow disease

Spain is insisting its beef is safe to eat, despite the deaths of two people from the human variant of mad cow disease.

The victims, ages 40 and 51, died in December and February of Creuztfeldt-Jakob disease, a fatal degenerative neurological disorder. It is the human variant of mad cow disease, also known as bovine spongiform encephalopathy.

They were the first such fatalities since 2005, when a 26-year-old woman died in Madrid.

An official says the new victims apparently contracted the disease before 2001. He says health controls on livestock and meat production are much tighter now than they were then.

The deaths were only reported now because post-mortem testing and Spanish bureaucratic procedures for recording such fatalities take a long time.

Mad cow disease was first reported in Britain in the mid-1980s. It has been blamed on farmers adding recycled meat and bone meal from infected cows into cattle feed.

Authorities believe eating meat from infected animals can cause the human variant of the fatal brain-wasting disease.