WASHINGTON (AP)--The U.S. government will spend an additional $2 million on research into bovine spongiform encephalopathy, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said March 18.

The money will pay for collaboration with laboratories in Britain, Italy and Spain. Funds will also go toward a facility being built in Ames, Iowa, for long-term study spanning at least the next decade.

The funding comes on top of the $4.7 million the USDA will spend this year to research the disease. President Bush has proposed increasing funding to $12 million in 2006.

Boosting research to better understand mad cow and other infections will make the nation's food supply more secure, Secretary of Agriculture Mike Johanns said in a speech to the National Restaurant Association's Food Safety Summit in Washington.

BSE is a brain-wasting ailment that, in humans, causes a variant form of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. That disease is a degenerative, fatal brain disorder that has killed more than 150 people, mostly in Britain, where there was an outbreak in the 1990s.

In North America, four cows tested positive in 2003 and 2005 for mad cow disease. Three were in Canada; one was in the United States, although it had been imported from Canada.

Date: 3/23/05