Yes. The human diseases are very rare and occur sporadically worldwide at a rate of about one case per one million people.

BSE belongs to a group of progressive degenerative neurological disease known as transmissible spongiform encephalopathies (TSEs). TSE diseases are always fatal.

The TSE diseases include:

• Scrapie, which affects sheep and goats
• Transmissible mink encephalopathy
• Feline (cat) spongiform encephalopathy
• Chronic wasting disease of deer and elk

There are six TSE diseased that affect people:

• Kura
• Classical Creutzfeldt Jakob disease (CJD)
• Variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD)
• Gerstmmann-Straussler-Scheinker syndrome
• Fatal familial insomnia
• Sporadic fatal insomnia