NR APRZ
AU Davis,J.
TI Europeans at Risk from Mad Cow Disease
QU A press release from - August 10, 1995
IA http://envirolink.org/arrs/news/mad_cow1.html
VT
UK Government claims that it has beaten BSE (bovine spongiform encephalopathy or mad cow disease) and that it is in sharp decline is a myth, according to the charity Viva! False reporting, reduced compensation and calculated deception is ensuring that large amounts of infected meat are being sold on the home market and increasingly to Continental consumers. In an attempt to protect the beef and dairy industries, recent research shows that human life is being put at serious risk.
The human form of the disease (Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease or CJD) is an untreatable killer and despite an incubation period of between 10 and 50 years, a disturbing link with cow meat is already beginning to appear. The CJD Surveillance Unit reports that people who eat veal regularly stand a 13 times greater chance of developing the disease.
This trend places Europeans at particular risk as they are unknowingly eating as many as 72,000 infected British calves every year, with the full knowledge of the UK government, according to calculations by Professor Richard Lacey of the Microbiology Department of Chapel Allerton Hospital, Leeds. It increases the likelihood that instead of being a British phenomenon CJD is likely to become a European-wide killer epidemic.
"MAFF's (Ministry of Agriculture Fisheries and Food) denials that infected calves are being sold and that there is any threat to humans from BSE carry little conviction as every one of its predictions concerning the transmission and virulence of BSE has proved incorrect", says Juliet Gellatley, Founder & Director of Viva!
The latest twist in the BSE saga concerns the lucrative export of 450,000 calves for the European veal trade. MAFF maintains that a calf's ear tag allows a computer check to be made on whether its mother was a suspected or actual BSE case. Viva! maintains that such a check is valueless as the five-year incubation period in cattle ensures that many calves will be from infected mothers who show no symptoms. Through statistical analysis of exports from the 55 per cent of British herds known to have been infected, it estimates that at least 72,000 exported calves will have the disease but not the symptoms.
What is particularly worrying for Continental veal eaters is that the minimal safeguards which apply in the UK are being totally ignored once the animals cross the Channel. In the UK, thymus glands and guts of calves under six months old must be removed. In Europe no such safeguards have been implemented and thymus glands are a sought-after delicacy when sold as sweetbreads. The agent responsible for BSE and possibly CJD has yet to be identified but it is believed to be concentrated in the thymus gland, making it a highly-infectious vector.
On the home market, the story is equally disturbing. The reduction in compensation payments for infected cattle has been reflected in a reduced number of reported cases, with farmers sending diseased cattle to market rather than risk losing money by reporting them to MAFF. It exactly mirrors what happened shortly after the outbreak of BSE, when reported cases shot up in number after MAFF introduced 100 per cent compensation. Viva! maintains that without this disincentive to farmers to report suspected BSE caes, the number would still be increasing, at best, plateauing.
According to MAFF's early predictions, there should by now be virtually no new cases at all as a result of the feed ban introduced seven years ago. In fact anticipated figures for 1995 are in excess of 20,000 cases, which strongly suggests that vertical transmission from mother to calf is the reason. The implications of this are that BSE is transmitted via blood and will therefore be present in all meat from infected cattle as well as in specified offal. The potential to infect large numbers of people is therefore a reality.
MAFF maintains that most of the current cases are as a result of rendering feed compounders and farmers all breaking the law by continuing to use parts of cattle in livestock feed.
"If it is true and regulations are being so comprehensively ignored, it says little for MAFF's reassurances about other aspects of its controls to ensure that indeed meat does not enter the food chain", says Juliet Gellatley. "The truth seems to be that MAFF would sooner place the lives of millions of people at risk rather than face up to the collapse of the livestock industry. Every new piece of evidence indicates that it will eventually have to confront both prospects."
AD John Davis "john@portsveg.demon.co.uk"
SP englisch
PO Internet
OR Prion-Krankheiten D