Very reassuring ... I think

GRAY: "... Can we say that there won't be a case of BSE (bovine spongiform encephalopathy) in the United States? No. We can't say that. We can't say that there might not be a case of variant CJD (Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease) in the United States, even when it can't be traced back to the United Kingdom or to Europe. But what we can say, even in the absence of zero risk, we all know there's no such thing as zero risk. What we can say after three years of study is we're confident that BSE is not going to become a major public health or animal health threat for the United States.

"With that, I'll turn the podium back to Secretary Veneman."

SECRETARY VENEMAN: "Thank you very much, Dr. Gray. ..."

-- George Gray of the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis and U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Ann Veneman, quoted in a transcript, "USDA & Harvard Announce Results of BSE Risk Assessment" on Nov. 30, 2001, on the U.S. Department of Agriculture web site