BSE is a disease which affects the nervous system of cattle and kills them. BSE is an abbreviation for 'bovine spongiform encephalopathy'.
BSE in British English
abbreviation for
bovine spongiform encephalopathy: a fatal slow-developing disease of cattle, affecting the nervous system. It is caused by a prion protein and is thought to be transmissible to humans, causing a variant form of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease
Informal name: mad cow disease
BSE in American English
(ˌbiˌɛsˈi)
noun
mad cow disease
Word origin
b(ovine) s(pongiform) e(ncephalopathy), technical term for the disease
Examples of 'BSE' in a sentence
BSE
`Farming's practically dried up after BSE and then foot-and-mouth.