Please Define "Outbreak"

An Associated Press story out today reports on Brazil's halting of processed beef exports to the U.S. while they try to improve sanitation and inspection standards. It's a simple, basic little story, until the last line:

"Brazil is the world's largest beef exporter, expanding sales last year after an outbreak of mad-cow disease in the United States."

An outbreak? One cow is considered an outbreak? So if I come down with the flu, there's been an "outbreak" of flu in this country. I never knew one person could be so important.

Also, that cow wasn't even raised here, it had been imported (already infected) from Canada.

Pardon me for climbing atop my soapbox. I know this doesn't mean squat to most of you, but it sticks in my crawl. As a journalist, and as a member of the agricultural community, it infuriates me when news outlets play loose with the facts. The AP story, like so many others, refers to "mad-cow disease". Actually, the condition is bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or BSE. Unless things have changed and I missed the memo, journalistically it's incorrect to refer to something (in the initial reference in a story) by a nickname. And to call what we had here an "outbreak" is just journalistically incorrect. It would be more correct to have said something like:

"Brazil is the world's largest beef exporter, expanding sales last year after the discovery of bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or BSE, in a single cow imported from Canada."

Stepping down from soapbox now...