-Caveat Lector-
New BSE inquiry raises fears over milk safety
Jonathan Leake, Science Editor
A NATIONWIDE investigation into the risk that milk could
transmit BSE between cows and humans is being launched by
the Food Standards Agency (FSA). The move follows private
warnings from scientists that the original experiment used
to declare milk safe was flawed.
This weekend Professor Malcolm Ferguson-Smith, the Cambridge
University geneticist who sat on the two-year BSE inquiry,
criticised the agriculture ministry for not doing the
necessary work. "It is astonishing that this research has
not been done," he said.
The new investigation coincides with fresh figures on the
spread of variant CJD (vCJD), the human equivalent of BSE,
showing that the number dead or dying from the disease has
risen to 90. It has also emerged that the number of people
aged over 50 dying from the disease has risen to six. It had
been thought that it was mainly a disease of the young.
The main research used to declare milk safe was published in
1995. It was based on giving milk from cows with BSE to
mice, orally and by direct injection into the brain. None of
the 275 mice in the research developed any sign of the
disease.
Although scientists say there is no evidence at present to
suggest that milk is unsafe, Ferguson-Smith believes the
experiment was flawed because of the species barrier that
prevents BSE passing from cows to mice. This, he said, made
it highly unlikely that any of the mice would have fallen
ill.
He said the work should also have been done in calves,
adding: "This would have been a thousand times more
sensitive."
Tastes all right: 11-year-old Victoria Robinson, from
Halifax, enjoys a glass
Photograph: Bob Collier
He warned that milk should be assumed to have the potential
to carry infection. Pointing out that BSE spreads via the
lymphoreticular system, a loose network of organs involved
in the immune system, he said: "Milk contains mammary cells,
cell organelles and cells from the lymphoreticular system.
It therefore has the potential to transmit prion diseases."
Britain consumes about 14 billion litres of milk a year, of
which half is as milk or cream and the rest cheese, yoghurt
and other dairy products. Tests suggest none of the
processing methods could kill prions, the deformed proteins
thought to cause BSE and CJD. The majority of the 1m or so
animals thought to have entered the human food chain while
infected with BSE were dairy cows, whose milk would have
been consumed for years before they died.
Most of the scientists and politicians involved in the BSE
crisis have taken comfort from the fact that there is little
positive evidence that prion diseases can be transmitted by
mothers' milk.
In Papua New Guinea, where the Fore tribe was almost wiped
out by kuru, a prion disease spread by cannibalism, studies
have shown that suckling children did not get the disease
from their mothers. Only consumption of flesh, especially
brains and other nervous tissue, seemed to pass it on.
There is, however, some evidence that other prion diseases
can spread through mothers' milk. In Japan, researchers
tested tissues taken from a pregnant woman who died of
sporadic CJD, a rare form that killed 38 people in Britain
last year. They found that her colostrum - secreted in the
first few days after a child is born - could pass the
disease to mice.
There is also a mystery over the mechanism by which calves
seem to get BSE from their mothers. Some evidence suggests
that they are infected in the womb and other work suggests
that milk could be a cause.
An FSA spokesman said the Central Veterinary Laboratories, a
government agency, had been commissioned to start the
research in the next few weeks. It would involve trying to
infect calves known to be free of BSE with milk from
diseased animals. The research will take at least three
years - the time it takes cattle to incubate BSE.
The spokesman said there was no evidence yet regarding milk,
but added: "We have identified this project as a priority."
Copyright 2001 Times Newspapers Ltd. This service is
provided on Times Newspapers' standard terms and conditions.
To inquire about a licence to reproduce material from The
Sunday Times, visit the Syndication website.
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