UK BSE Inquiry - Petfood alert was cue for BSE ban

[Guest guest]

Dear All,

And still more on the conspiracies which underpinned the UK BSE epidemic!

Cheers etc., Lynette.

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THE INDEPENDENT, London, October 21, 1998

Petfood alert was cue for BSE ban

By Steve Connor, Science Editor

MINISTERS discussed the possibility of

destroying the entire national cattle herd in 1990,

the same year the government's most senior health

adviser was reassuring the public about the safety

of beef.

Meldrum, the former chief veterinary

officer, told the BSE inquiry yesterday that when

the first cat was diagnosed in 1990 with a

spongiform encephalopathy, MacGregor,

who was then the agriculture minister, considered

a wide-scale or total slaughter policy. At the same

time the Chief Medical Officer at the Department

of Health, Sir Acheson, issued a

statement, saying that there was no scientific

justification for not eating British beef.

But, Mr Meldrum told the inquiry, a BSE-like

disorder in cats that year raised the prospect of a

mass slaughter of cattle. " It was discussed at the

time whether or not the UK should consider

implementing either herd-slaughter policy or

indeed a policy of the whole herd. I remember

discussions taking place in the night. So that was

not a new thought. If everything went completely

wild and if there was, for instance, evidence that

infectivity had been found in meat, which it has

not, in beef, then that would raise a totally new

scenario. "

It also emerged at the inquiry that one of the most

important measures to protect against " mad-cow "

disease was introduced only after the Government

realised the petfood industry was planning to

bring in the same precaution to safeguard cat and

dog food. The Government became convinced of

the need to ban specified bovine offals (SBOs),

the most infective parts of the cattle carcass, only

when it heard the advice commissioned by

petfood manufacturers.

The advice, by Kimberlin, a former head

of the Neuropathogenesis Unit in Edinburgh, was

" inspirational " , because it had gone beyond

measures recommended in 1989 by the

Southwood committee investigating BSE.

Southwood had not mentioned an outright ban on

specified bovine offals but advised that, as a

precaution against BSE being passed to humans,

certain bovine material should be removed from

baby food.

Mr Meldrum said Dr Kimberlin had advised the

petfood industry that offals such as brain and

spinal cord should be removed from the petfood

chain to protect against BSE.

Mr Meldrum said that after meeting Dr Kimberlin

and the petfood-making association in May 1989

he became convinced of the argument for

introducing a similar ban in the human food chain.

But Department of Health officials feared an SBO

ban would draw attention to " the problem of

pharmaceuticals " also being made with bovine

material.

The health officials continued to oppose

introduction of an offal ban on grounds that the

Southwood committee had thought it was not

necessary.

Mr Meldrum said he told Mr MacGregor of the

advice given to the petfood industry. The minister

met health officials in June 1989 to lobby for a full

ban on specified bovine offals, despite the

Department of Health's objections.

The ban was designed to protect the public

against cows that were incubating BSE without

showing any symptoms. It is now believed that

many hundreds of thousands of cattle incubating

BSE went into the human food chain and that the

single most important factor limiting the spread of

the disease to humans was the ban on specified

bovine offals.