Beef from Ireland will be hitting the shelves in U.S. supermarkets for the first time since mad cow disease swept Europe about 15-years-ago.

Ireland was the first European country to secure a beef-selling contract with the U.S. since the mad cow disease epidemic. This is a big deal for Ireland, as the U.S. is the biggest beef buyer in the world, according to an online statement released by the ministry earlier this week. 

"This U.S. market is a huge prize, given the size of the market and the demand we know exists there for premium grass-fed beef," Agriculture Minister Simon Coveney said in the ministry's statement. "We now have first-mover advantage as a result of being the first EU member state to gain entry." 

Ireland is expecting to see $59.6 or more in profits from the U.S. this year, with the potential for shipments "to go way beyond that" in the future, Coveney said.

In 1992 there were more than 37,000 cases of mad cow disease in the U.K. That number dropped to 11 in 2010, according to the latest report on the disease by the World Organization for Animal Health. 

Mad cow disease is a slowly progressive, fatal disease that effects the central nervous system of adult cattle. When a human consumes beef products contaminated with central nervous system tissue, such as brain and spinal cord, from cattle infected with mad cow disease they can become ill. When a human contracts the variant of the disease it's called Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD).

At the height of the cow epidemic, only 229 people worldwide contracted vCJD, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.