BRUSSELS, Jan 28: A goat slaughtered in France in 2002 has tested positive for "mad cow" disease, officials said Friday, the first time in the world that the disease has crossed the species barrier from bovines.

But the European Union's executive arm said there was minimal risk to humans after British scientists established that bovine spongi form encephalopathy (BSE) has crossed the species barrier from cows naturally.

"It's the first natural case in the world," European Commission spokesman Philip Tod told AFP, explaining that goats had been given BSE in laboratories to see if the cross-species infection was possible.

"The European Commission proposes to step up testing to determine if this is an isolated incident," Brussels said in a statement. "Although this is the first time that BSE has been found in a goat under natural conditions, precautionary measures to protect consumers from this eventuality have been applied in the EU for several years," it said.

The goat was slaughtered and randomly tested in France in 2002 as part of an EU-wide surveillance programme against the spread of BSE, whose human variant Creutzfelt-Jakob disease (vCJD) has killed 148 people in Britain.

France has recorded nine cases of vCJD; Ireland two (one of whom had lived in England), followed by Canada, Italy and the United States with one death each. Brain tissue from the goat was sent for analysis at the EU's BSE centre at Weybridge, England. -AFP