CATTLE ILLNESS ALARMS BRITISH.

Byline: Robert Seely Associated Press

Schools in England and Wales dropped hamburgers from lunch menus Thursday, and five nations banned imports of British beef because of fear that "mad cow disease" may be killing humans.

In Britain's shops, consumers were simply confused. "Everyone tells you what are the risks of getting AIDS, but nobody tells you what are the risks of eating beef. I don't know enough facts," said Natasha Parker, shopping in London.

Prime Minister John Major and other political leaders said they were still eating beef, though the government Wednesday had confirmed for the first time that humans might have contracted the cattle disease.

Bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or BSE, the scientific name for "mad cow disease," was first diagnosed in 1986. It is believed to have spread to cattle via feed enriched with sheep organs.

Since then, nearly 160,000 dairy cattle have been destroyed in Britain after showing distinctive symptoms such as staggering and drooling.

Symptoms of the human form, called Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, include mental deterioration, slurred speech and difficulty walking that gets progressively worse until death.

Scientists are uncertain how the disease is transmitted.

About one-third of London schools stopped serving beef after previous "mad cow" scares, and other schools in several counties did so Thursday.

Lisa Raynor, a cook at Bigwood School in Nottingham, said some children had told her: " 'We're not having mad cow burgers,' so they are getting concerned themselves."

In the United States, the Department of Agriculture has forbidden beef imports from Britain and other countries with BSE since 1989.