Mad Cow Disease did not hit only the UK (France, for instance, was also significantly hit). But anyway, for this kind of regulations, it is definitely at the European level and it is quite likely MCD is the reason for it
UK was hit worst, but other european countries were affected as well. I was pretty young when that happened but I still remember the images of piles of cow carcasses being burned on the open field.
The MCD was the reason to ban feeding animal proteins to cows. Before MCD it was common practice to feed ground animal (cow) bones and leftovers from the slaughterhouse to cows.
I did some work with a guy who was asked to figure out how much accelerant was needed to burn a pile of cows. I knew burning them was a last resort, I hadn't figured that it was actually hard to do.
