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Concrete, Wednesday, May 1 1, 1994
Concrete, Wednesday, May 11 , 1994
Features
Features
& he debate over the safety of beef which began in the mid 1980s with the discovery of the widespread BSE epidemic in cows is once again a live issue. On one side stand the Government, claiming that mad cow disease is not a risk to human health and that there is no need to worry. And, on the other, stand scientists... countering that there is absolutely no evidence for the Government's claims. The spark for the recent ignition of the issue is the case of 16 year old schoolgirl Vicky Rimrner. Vicky, an apparently normal and healthy girl until a few months ago, is now lying critically ill in hospital. For she has a progressive degeneration which has left her deaf, blind and unable to speak. The significance ofVicky's ill-
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to believe and how we should apply what evidence there is to our own lives. When BSE was flfSt diagnosed in 1985, it was estimated that the epidemic would peter out at between 17-20,000 cases. This figure was reported by a committee under Sir Richard South wood, set up to assess the significance of the BSE epidemic. In June 1988, Southwood recommended that the carcasses of affected animals should be destroyed by incineration, as this is the only sure way to destroy the infective agent. A month later, the then Minister of Agriculture, John MacGregor, announced a food ban whereby sheep and cattle would no longer be fed 'their own' brains and offal. This process, known as 'rendering', is a result of modem society's demand for quick cheap food, and
Scientists and ministers still choose to disagree about ~~ e spread of mad cow disease, despite a teenager contracting the human equivalent of the disease this year. ark Austin chews over the facts and attempts to find out if all the scaremongering really was worth it after all
Vicky Rimmer, an apparently normal and healthy girl until a few months ago, is now lying critically ill in hospital. .. the significance of her illness was first raised by the Daily Mirror's headline, 'Mad Cow Tragedy Blamed On Hamburger' ness was first raised by the Daily Mirror's headline, 'Mad Cow Tragedy Blamed on Hamburger', when it went on to report that she was suffering from CreutzfeldJakob disease (CJD), the human equivalent of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE). To add fuel to the fire, the German Government have rejected imports British beefon the grounds that it is impossible to be too careful, in the light of the fact that there is no hard evidence on the host range of the potentially lethal disease. In the words of German Health Minister Horst Seehofer, ''Today we know that with these lethal diseases, we cannot act too soon. "We must exclude possible risks for people across Europe. "A catastrophe such as we saw with AIDS would be a declaration ofbankruptcy for health protection in a united Europe." He hints that foresight is preferable to hindsight - at least in this sort of issue. Mr Seehofer is simply saying the possibility cannot be excluded that BSE can be transferred to humans. And amidst all these conflicting views, it is difficult to know what
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plenty of it. it has led to intensive farming practices to meet the increased demand, such as rendering and battery hen farms. The full text of the Southwood report was published in February 1989, its ominous conclusion being, "From present evidence, it is likely that cattle will prove to be a dead end host for the disease agent and most unlikely that BSE will have any implications for human health. "Nevertheless, if our assessments of these likelihoods are incorrect, the implications will be extremely serious." Southwood's criticism of the wisdom of intensive farming practices was not what the Ministry of Agriculture Fisheries and Food (MAFF) wanted to hear, especially his warning that, "It may be a decade or more before complete reassurance can be given." But under a joint announcement with the Department of Health, they twisted Southwood's conclusions to say, ''The Report concludes that the risk oftransmission ofBSE to humans appears remote and it is therefore unlikely that BSE will have any implications for human
Could biting the burger be TllOre risky than we think? health." spoken critic of what he sees as a And all of a sudden, the public cover-up by the Government. were nottoo concerned about BSE. He writes, ''There is little reaYet the reality is that such apa- son to blame the feed at all in rethy may be fatal. cent years. Far from petering out at 17,000 "Rather, this endemic situation to 20,000 cases, instances of BSE in cattle is likely to have been perpetuated by vertical and horizontal are still rising today. More than 100,000 cases had spread in cattle themselves." been confirmed by August 1993, MAFF deny this, but adds Prowith a monthly figure of about fessor Lacey, "If vertical transmis3,000 to 3,500 during 1992-3. sion were happening, BSE could Professor Richard Lacey, a go on for ever." medical microbiologist at Leeds Ifthistransmissionofthedisease University, has been the most ou:- from cow to calf is taking place,
then the cruc1al break pomt IS the 1988 food ban. Professor Lacey claims that any calf born after the ban was brought into effect and that grows up to develop BSE could not have got it !Tom the feed. Yet they have been coming endlessly. The Government says that it is due to old feed still circulating, but this is becoming increasingly unsustainable. The Government then increased its claim to say that such old feed
was still around tor Ill months at~ ter the ban, but as farmers mostly buy their feed in monthly lots, this is unlikely. Professor Lacey claims to have hard evidence of maternal transmission and predicts that between 50,000 and 5 million people will die from CID - the human equivalent ofBSE- in the next few years. He bases this on the assumption that one per cent of people who路 have eaten infected beef products may suffer from the disease.
Put like this, people in Britain are currently in the middle of a massive experiment, whereby everyone who has eaten beef in the past few years is a guinea pig. The Government's claim is that the disease in cows has resulted from feeding cattle with offal from sheep that had the disease scrapie, similar to BSE and endemic in sheep for centuries. There has never been any evidence that it is transmittable to humans, and on the same basis, ar-
gue the Government, BSE poses no danger either. What is missing from this theory is acknowledgement of a fact that both Lacey and Southwood, in his report of 1989, have recognised. In the report, Southwood warned, "It cannot be automatically assumed that animals and man will react to BSE agent exposure in the same way as they have done to scrapie." What both Lacey and Southwood are pointing out, is that
when one of these infective agents has passed from one host to another (as in the Government's theory ofBSE originating in sheep scrapie), then the agent may alter in properties including its potential for infection. In other words, having jumped one species barrier already from sheep to cattle, and possibly mutating along the way, BSE would be perfectly capable of jumping into humans. One may remember the mass of media attention that MP John Gummer attracted in May 1990 when he publicly persuaded his daughter Cordelia to eat a beefburger. This backed up his statement in the House of Commons that beef can be eaten safely by everybody. This exemplified what had become the core ofthe Government's BSE policy, namely the argument of no evidence. While this was in fact true, and still is, it is also intensely deceitful as there is equally no evidence that beef is not harmful. It cannot be stated for sure whether or not Vicky Rimmer is just such an example of the disease's potential, but the CID Surveillance Unit in Edinburgh, beaded by Dr Bob Will, claims to have established what it says it a causal link between BSE and CID. In a report published last year, the unit showed eight farmers who had developed CID. As there are only about 50 new cases of the disease each year in the UK, this evidence sounds particularly damning. In fact, only two of the farmers had BSE in his herd, but given that there are only 115,000 dairy farm workers, even two instances of the disease among them is above usual expectations. It is easy to see how both the scientists and the Government could use these figures, and they illuminate the heart of the whole debate overBSE. Nobody knows what to believe, but everybody knows what they don't want to believe. If scientists such as Professor Lacey are right, they will be vindicated within the decade. For as the Right Honourable William Waldegrave recently admitted, politicians are notorious for covering things up, so it may serve us well to trust the scientists, who after all, should know what they're talking about. We may well be mad not to sit
John G~mmer; and daughter Cordelia, in 'that' photograph