There is much debate in the scientific community regarding how bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) is spread. Currently, the infective agent is believed to be a prion, which is primarily a protein that can override a host organism's cellular machinery and make the host generate more of the prion. BSE is believed to be spread by prion-infected tissue from the central nervous system (brain, spinal cord) and selected portions of the small intestine; some of this tissue could be present in meat and bone meal, hence the ban on feeding most mammalian-origin protein sources to ruminants. BSE is not spread by animal-to-animal contact, so an animal infected with BSE cannot infect another animal with which it comes into contact. Little is known regarding the minimum amount of prion material that can cause an infection.

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