010391 Irish Have Higher Risk from “Mad Cow” Meat

London - Irish consumers have a higher risk of eating meat that could be contaminated with mad cow disease than their neighbours in Britain or France, scientists said on Monday.

A report by a panel of experts that advises the government on the brain- wasting disease and its human form new variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD) said the relative risks were roughly 220 times greater in Ireland than in Great Britain because more infected cattle had been slaughtered there.

In France the risk is about 24 times higher than in Britain.

The Spongiform Encephalopathy Advisory Committee (SEAC) gave details of the study, which was presented to its last meeting, in their latest report.

“These numbers are of concern,” Professor Peter Smith, the acting chairman of SEAC, told a news conference.

But he stressed that the risk assessment done by Dr Christl Donnelly of Imperial College in London was not complete and assumed that bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE ), or mad cow disease, had been under-reported in Ireland.

The study is on the website of the Foods Standards Agency (www.bsereview.org.uk/templates/latest/item.cfm/76), which monitors the quality of food. The report estimates that 22,000 Irish cattle were infected with BSE between 1985 and 1996. This compares with almost one million in Britain since the start of the BSE epidemic.

In 2000, Donnelly estimated that 346 infected animals were slaughtered for consumption in Ireland and 159 were within 12 months of clinical onset of the disease, compared to one in England and 52 in France.

Animals close to developing clinical signs of BSE are the most likely to carry the infection in their tissue.

So far 95 confirmed and suspected cases of vCJD have been reported along with two in France. The incurable disease is linked to eating meat contaminated with BSE. In Britain it is illegal for animals over 30 months old to enter the food chain.

Donnelly's risk assessment for France was published in the science journal last year.

The report comes just a week after a leading expert warned that vCJD could hit thousands of Britons over the coming years.

Professor John Collinge, of St Mary's Hospital in London, said the incubation period for the disease could be up to 30 years, much higher than scientists had previously thought.

His comments were made after scientists suggested a cluster of cases of the disease in the central English village of Queniborough had been due to butchering practices.

“I think given that it looks as though these cases may have been exposed prior to 1985 when there was very little BSE around, many more cases must be in the pipeline,” he said.

RETURN TO HOME PAGE

E-mail: sflanagan@sprintmail.com