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WSWS : News & Analysis : Medicine & Health : BSE/CJD
Britain: Big increase in human form of "Mad Cow Disease"
By Paul Mitchell
11 September 2001
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The incidence of variant Creutzfeldt Jacobs Disease (vCJD)—the human form
of “Mad Cow Disease”—has increased 20 percent in the UK since last year.
In his announcement last week, Professor James Ironside, head of the CJD
Surveillance Unit in Edinburgh, said that instead of “a flat line, we are now
seeing an upward trend that has been sustained for the past four quarters”.
The total number of cases could vary between several hundred and 150,000,
he added. Professor Ironside’s unit has released figures showing there are
now 106 confirmed or probable cases of vCJD, the fatal and incurable brain
wasting disorder in the UK. Most scientific opinion now accepts that the
disease is probably related to eating beef infected with BSE (Bovine
Spongiform Encephalopathy), or “Mad Cow Disease”.
Ironside also revealed that people in the north of Britain are twice as likely to
get the disease as those living in the south. He thought this could be due to
differences in genetic make-up, but was more likely to be the result of
differences in diet.
Professor Tim Laing, from the Centre for Food Policy, told the BBC that
differences in diet were a “class issue”. Cheaper meat products such as
pies, sausages and burgers often contained the most infective tissues such
as brain and spinal cord, before their use in the human food chain was
banned. “Lower-quality meat products tend to be eaten by people on lower
incomes, so in the north-south gap we might be seeing the beginnings of a
class element to vCJD,” Professor Laing said.
Other scientists are sceptical that regional differences in diet are the cause
of a north-south gap in the distribution of vCJD. But the resolution of this
scientific question has been hampered by the actions of the food
manufacturers, who for several years have refused to give statistics to
epidemiologists about the use and distribution of mechanically recovered
meat (MRM), a product widely used in meat pies, sausages and so-called
“economy burgers” and which has also been included in soups and prepared
meals. The MRM slurry is obtained by blasting cow carcasses with high-
pressure water jets after removal of the prime cuts. Members of the
government’s Spongiform Encephalopathy Advisory Committee (SEAC)
complained last month that they had tried for five years to get the meat
industry to provide the information.
The British Meat Manufacturers Association (BMMA) has said the
information is difficult to obtain or is non-existent, although it seems only
twelve premises processed MRM. A report in the Independentnewspaper
said the BMMA did carry out its own confidential survey in 1997, but the data
was “lost during an office move”. The BMMA also says it raised the need for
an official survey in 1997-98 after Labour came to power, but “it wasn’t done”.
The MRM information is vital for scientists such as epidemiologists trying to
understand its role in the spread of vCJD. After a two-year investigation, the
official BSE Inquiry, set up by Labour shortly after coming to office in 1997,
said, it is “now clear is that this was the route by which infectious material
was most likely to enter the human food chain.”
In 1989, the Conservative government banned the most highly infective
tissue—brain and spinal cord—from human consumption. However, it still
allowed the backbone to be used to obtain MRM, provided the
slaughterhouses could guarantee 100 percent removal of the spinal cord. The
BSE Inquiry pointed out that a Ministry of Agriculture report in 1990 on
slaughterhouse practices “might have led one to expect such failures [of that
guarantee]”. Even if the spinal cord had been removed, other infective nervous
tissue such as the dorsal root ganglia would be left behind.
The government was reluctant to ban the use of MRM, arguing that meat
industry profits would be affected. At that time, over 5,000 tons of MRM were
produced each year, worth about £3 million.
According to the BSE Inquiry, at its meeting in August 1994, SEAC agreed
not to ban the use of backbones in MRM when Ministry of Agriculture
officials gave assurances that the spinal cord was being removed. At its
meeting in June 1995, a ban was considered again but was postponed; one
reason given was that “the impact of prohibiting the use of spinal columns on
the meat industry would be enormous”. The BSE Inquiry also notes that
despite assurances, some officials already realised there were “potentially
serious failings” in the ability of slaughterhouses to completely remove the
spinal column.
At its November 1995 meeting, SEAC learned that checks had found spinal
cord contaminations on 17 separate occasions in 16 slaughterhouses, and
recommended a ban on the use of cattle backbone in MRM, which the
government finally implemented in December 1995. Backbones from sheep
and goats were only banned in 1998. The production of MRM, mainly from
chickens, still continues in enormous quantities.
The BSE Inquiry concluded that the eventual ban on using backbones to
obtain MRM, “as far as preventing fragments of the spinal cord from getting
into the human food chain was concerned, this was to a large extent a case
of shutting the stable door” after the horse had bolted.
A related food safety issue also came to public attention last week. Doctor
Richard Kimberlin, a member of SEAC for eight years, warned of the dangers
of BSE in lamb. He accused the Labour government’s new Food Standards
Agency of playing a potentially dangerous “waiting game” by not
implementing a ban on sheep offal. Kimberlin believes BSE may have
passed to sheep in the 1980s, but it has been masked by scrapie, a
Spongiform disease similar to BSE, but usually non-fatal to humans. Recent
experiments on sheep brains suggest that some animals originally thought
to have died from scrapie could actually have died as a result of BSE. Many
scientists believe that BSE possibly originated from mutations that occurred
in scrapie, when sheep tissues were used in the manufacture of cattle feed.
The resulting BSE could then have passed back to sheep, and consequently
to humans who ate mutton.
Professor Malcolm Ferguson-Smith, who sat on the BSE Inquiry, accused
the government of ignoring its recommendations and feared the 16-volume
report would become “a hugely expensive doorstop”. He attacked the
government’s decision to hold the foot and mouth inquiries in private, saying
the “same old gang” seems to be in charge of the new Department of
Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, set up in June to replace the Ministry of
Agriculture, and regarded by many critics as little more than a lobby for
agribusiness.
Copyright 1998-2001
World Socialist Web Site
All rights reserved
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believe in anything merely on the authority of Teachers, elders or wise men.
Believe only after careful observation and analysis, when you find that it
agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all.
Then accept it and live up to it."
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A merely fallen enemy may rise again, but the reconciled
one is truly vanquished. -Johann Christoph Schiller,
German Writer (1759-1805)
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"Everyone has the right...to seek, receive and impart
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