BMJ No 7122 Volume 315
News Saturday 13 December 1997
UK government bans sale of beef on the bone
| New restrictions on beef to keep bovine spongiform encephalo-pathy (BSE) out of the food chain are being imposed by the British government in response to fresh scientific evidence of infectivity. Tissue of the dorsal root ganglia within the spinal column is now suspect. As a result, a ban will be imposed on beef sold "on the bone," such as T bone steaks.
In addition, the government is considering a public inquiry into the whole BSE episode, going back to the early 1980s, when British cattle were fed sheep protein probably contaminated by scrapie. |  | |
| Tissue within the spinal column is now suspect |
The inquiry, by a judge rather than a scientist, would examine the degree of complacency or concealment about the risk of human infection of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, first admitted by the previous Conservative government 21 months ago.
Its Labour successor, by contrast, risks being accused of overreaction to advice from the Spongiform Encephalo-pathy Advisory Committee (SEAC), which met on 2 December. The next day the agriculture minister, Jack Cunningham, announced that he was banning beef on the bone "on a strictly precautionary basis."
He said that new evidence had emerged from an experiment designed to check which parts of cattle may have BSE infectivity. Animals fed large doses of BSE by mouth showed infectivity in the dorsal root ganglia. The research has not yet been published but has been submitted to The Veterinary Record. Further new findings still being evaluated indicate that infectivity may also be found in bone marrow in cattle at a very late stage of the disease.
In both cases the experimental animals showed the infecti-vity only at ages over 30 months, above which all cattle are already excluded from the food chain. Tests on muscle, meat, and blood in the same experiments were negative. SEAC emphasised that the risk is very small. It advised either leaving consumers to choose what precautions to take or requiring all beef to be boned before being sold.
Choosing the second option, Dr Cunningham said that in taking account of the views of the chief medical officer, Sir Kenneth Calman, he had concluded that it would not be acceptable to allow tissue shown to transmit BSE to remain within the human food chain. Risk is estimated on the basis that 5% of dorsal root ganglia in cuts of meat on the bone may be eaten by the consumer, usually in the action of gnawing or scraping the bone. The new restriction applies to beef from cattle over 6 months old, whether from Britain or imported. Although only about 5% of beef is consumed on the bone, it is a further blow to the British beef industry at a time when prices have slumped and farmers are taking protest action against cheap imports.
John Warden
London
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