Italy's fear over missing BSE cows

Eating BSE infected beef has been linked to about 100 vCJD cases across Europe

ROME, Italy (CNN) -- Meat infected with the so-called mad cow disease may have entered the food chain, Italian health officials have said.

Two cows which had been diagnosed with having bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) disappeared in 1994 and may have been processed as food for humans, the Italian Ministry of Health said on Thursday.

The news comes two days after the first suspected case of the human form of mad cow disease, Creutzfeldt-Jakob (vCJD) was reported in the country.

Doctors believe vCJD -- which kills its carrier by eating holes into the brain tissue -- can be caught by humans who eat meat infected with the disease.

But Ministry of Health officials would not link the cows' disappearance with the suspected case of vCJD in a young woman in Sicily.

EXTRA INFORMATION IN-DEPTH: Mad Cow Disease

The average incubation time vCJD is seven or eight years.

The two cows were imported into Sicily from England. After they were diagnosed with mad cow disease they disappeared, and officials suspect they were slaughtered and the meat was distributed to consumers.

Officials say there is a problem in Sicily with slaughter houses in the hands of the Mafia.

The disease has killed more than 100 people, most of them in Britain, since being identified in the mid-1980s. It has resulted in wholesale herd slaughtering, mandatory testing and tighter regulations in European Union nations.