The practice of butchers' having contact with animal brains was banned in Britain in 1989, three years after mad cow disease was first identified here, and since 1996 whole heads of animals must be disposed of in slaughterhouses as specified risk material. The disease's capacity to produce the fatal disease in humans became known in 1996 and led to a three-year European Union worldwide ban on the export of British beef. It cost the country billions of dollars in lost business, and farmers were only just recovering from the crisis when the current foot-and- mouth disease outbreak began four weeks ago.
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/22/world/22BRIT.html