News that a single case of BSE has been found on a Dutch farm will have sent shivers down the spines of all who lived through the UK outbreak of the disease which crippled the industry in the mid 1980s.

An eight-year-okd cow that died on a Dutch farm tested positive for the dreaded bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), the Dutch government announced.

Measures have been taken to seal off the farm where the cow died, said the country's agriculture minister, Piet Adema, who added that the infected animal “did not get into the food chain and does not constitute a risk to food safety”.

BSE first broke out in the late 1980s among cattle in the UK and over the years, 4.5 million cattle were slaughtered to contain its spread. In the UK, he number of positive BSE cases plummeted after bans were introduced on feed that included meat and bone meal from infected cows which was believed to be the main source of the disease, although there was some evidence that certain genetics were prevalent.

The last case that had been detected in the Netherlands until now was in 2011.

Tests on the cow from a farm in a South Holland province found the animal had a naturally occurring form of the disease known as atypical BSE and not the so-called 'classical' BSE, caused by animals eating contaminated feed.

Food safety authorities are conducting an investigation to trace any offspring of the dead animal as well as cows that ate the same feed or grew up with it.