UK beef bone ban to stay

An intervention by the chief medical officer, Professor Liam Donaldson, last week stopped the UK government lifting its ban on beef on the bone.

An assessed “negligible risk” from eating British beef on the bone had to be balanced against the continuing possibility of a “very large” epidemic of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, Professor Donaldson reported.

There have now been 35 deaths from new variant CJD, probably caused by eating meat infected with bovine spongiform encephalopathy.

Professor Donaldson states: “It is impossible to …