Risk of mad cow disease in NZ low (NZPA via Yahoo!Xtra News) The main world body for animal health has recognised New Zealand as having "negligible" risk of mad cow disease, scientificially known as bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE). [News Source]

Mad cows and cannibalism. For one legacy of the BSE, scrapie and foot-and-mouth debacles is that consumers have become much more concerned about the provenance of food, and much more conscious of what they are eating. [News Source]

Food safety fears over animals fed to animals. Tests to allow the remains of animals to be reintroduced into farm feed for the first time since the BSE crisis are being carried out by European scientists, The Times has learnt. [News Source]

Spectre of ‘mad cow’ disease hangs over plans to feed chickens to pigs. Almost 20 years after BSE led to a feed ban, an EU body says use of meat meal from non-ruminants poses no danger to human health. [News Source]

Honey, I’m gone. Around the world, honeybees are vanishing en masse, leaving their humans engaged in a furious attempt to figure out the meaning of their exodus. [News Source]