The US is not doing enough about this proplem, I had a friend die of this disease years before it became known by the public in this county. I had also heard of others in the east Texas area from time to time again years before it was made public that there was such a desease.
Your friend did not die from bovine spongiform encephalopathy (mad cow disease), unless he lived overseas.
A rare but fatal human variant has been around since long before we started hearing of mad cow disease. It's called Cruzfield-Jacob disease. Nobody knows how people get it. It seems to arise spontaneously, and it is devastating. Beef is not an issue in these cases.
The brain-wasting diseases are not confined to cattle.
Colorado is having a problem with a similar disease in wild elk. Sheep get a variant called "scrapie." Squirrels are thought to be a carrier, and a possible source of the East Texas human cases.
The British outbreak of bovine (i.e. cow) encephalopathy was directly traced to feedstock made from animal byproducts. Such feed has been banned in the US for years.
Only two cases of "mad cow disease" have been found in the US: one in the Northeast, from an old cow imported from Canada that had eaten the contaminated feed, and another in Texas last year, source of disease as yet unknown. No other animals in their herds were affected or infected.
There have been no human cases of mad cow disease diagnosed in the US. None.
The Japanese are overreacting. They face greater danger from their contaminated seafood.