Washington ? The government has chosen Kansas State University to help test for mad cow disease.

Kansas State has one of five new laboratories authorized Tuesday by the U.S. Department of Agriculture Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service. The new labs will work with seven others approved in March.

“This further solidifies Kansas State as a national and world leader in animal and plant disease and food security research,” said Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., a KSU alumnus.

The labs will use rapid tests approved by Agriculture Department, which has a goal of testing 220,000 or more animals by the end of 2005.

“This approval will place us in the front line of the nation’s war on animal disease and will be a key component in the constant surveillance to determine threats such as BSE,” KSU president Jon Wefald said.

Bovine spongiform encephalopathy, commonly called mad cow disease, is a fatal disease that eats holes in the brain. Humans who eat meat that contains BSE can contract the rare but fatal illness known as variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease.

The other newly-approved labs are at state and university facilities in Kissimmee, Fla.; St. Paul, Minn.; Frankfort, Ky., and Harrisburg, Pa.