Yeah, BSE doesn’t transmit in that way- it still led to burnings etc though but not mass closures.
BSE’s never really gone away completely, has it? We get a couple of cases every year, the epidemic’s beaten though and a cow here or there isn’t much to worry about, no reason to think this is more than that I think. We know exactly how it happened first time round and we’re not going there again. IIRC there’s historical cases of something that appears to be mad cow going back to roman times- it’s just that it didn’t used to have a medium for mass spreading.
Not good for the beef industry to have it back in the public eye mind.