“Like most food scares before it (remember Alar?), mad-cow fear seems to be slowly dying out. Last month a widely run Canadian Press story reported on the lack of public panic after the discovery of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE — that is, mad cow) in another Canadian cow. We last reported on this (non-)phenomenon in March, when an American mad cow discovery merited front-page attention on only one out of six major newspapers. Why so little hoopla? It seems like the public is finally catching on to the concept of risk, including the fact that the size of a threat is modified by its likelihood. So what’s the threat? Last week Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns told reporters that ‘the prevalence of BSE in the United States is less than one case per 1 million adult cattle.’” (05/01/06)