The inquiry into the BSE scandal leaves us no clearer about the future health of today's children. Maggie Jones reports
The Phillips report on BSE, popularly known as 'mad cow disease', has revealed the chain of incompetence and cover-up behind a crisis which has half destroyed the British meat industry and caused 85 people to die from new variant CJD (vCJD).
But while the majority of those who have died contracted the disease in their teens and twenties, the question that needs to be asked is, how safe are children now?
There seems to be little doubt that the measures taken to combat BSE have resulted in a dramatic reduction in the numbers of cows suffering from BSE and the disease should be all but eliminated some time next year.
However, the problem is that BSE has a long incubation period. The youngest person to die so far of vCJD (Creutzfeldt Jakob Disease) was 14-year-old Zoe Jeffries, who died on 28 October, having been diagnosed at the age of 12. If most BSE cases will become apparent after ten or 12 years, then we may be seeing the worst of the disease. More worrying, however, is the recent diagnosis of a man of 74 who may have been infected from an early case of BSE in the 1970s. If the disease can lie dormant for 20 or 30 years, then we may be seeing just the tip of the iceberg.
A possible explanation for why vCJD has predominantly affected young people is their disproportionate consumption of cheap beefburgers, which during the 1980s contained mechanically recovered meat (scraps of meat stripped from the bones by machine) containing offal and material from the brain or spinal cord of BSE-affected cattle. There may also be an increased risk of infection through contact between affected meat and a person's broken skin or mucous membranes - jeopardising children who are more likely to be experiencing tonsillitis, gastric or respiratory infections, or cutting teeth. Children may also have been at risk from vaccines.
Sources of risk
Vaccines Last month one manufacturer of polio vaccine, Medeva, had to withdraw its product because British foetal calf serum had been used in making the vaccine. This has alerted people to the danger that children and adults could contract vCJD from vaccines. In fact, the Phillips report is reassuring on this issue. It stresses that bovine material was only used as a growth medium in the preparation of vaccines and is not present in the final product. Also, studies carried out in 1993 failed to infect mice when bovine material from vaccines was injected.
Mother to baby transfer One worrying development is the fact that an 11-month-old baby whose mother died from vCJD in May could have been infected while in the womb. The child is brain-damaged and suffers from convulsions, though it's not clear yet whether she has vCJD.
Baby foods There seemed to be an intuition from the beginning that babies and children might be most vulnerable to the new disease. As far back as February 1989 the Southwood Working Party made a recommendation that ruminant offal and thymus should be banned from baby food. It is still not clear why, if this material was not considered safe in baby food, it could be considered safe in products such as beefburgers fed to young children. Despite debate, this recommendation was implemented as a 'measure of extreme caution.' It was not till June 1989 that these products were banned from use in all human food.
School meals In April 1990, Huddersfield Local Education Authority took the precautionary measure of taking beef off the school menu. Other local authorities soon followed suit. The Local Authorities Caterers Association (LACA) received hundreds of calls at this time from worried parents and headteachers about school meals, and advised school cooks to substitute turkey, chicken, and pork for beef. By December 1995, 1,150 schools had taken beef off the menu or were considering alternatives.
LACA says that when the BSE scare was at its height 75 per cent of schools had taken beef off the menu, but since then it has slowly crept back. Now there tends to be more choice in school meals, with non-beef and vegetarian alternatives. One survey found that out of 150 local authorities, only about ten have kept a complete ban on beef.
A spokesman for the National Day Nurseries Association says that over the past seven years there has been a significant decline in using red meat in nurseries. 'There were concerns before BSE,' he says. 'Traditionally nursery children have never been fed a lot of red meat and that has become less because of safety reasons and what constitutes a good diet. Nurseries have also responded to parents' requests for white meat and vegetarian dishes.'
Stewart Pickering, director of the nursery chain Kids Unlimited, says that it took beef off the menu as soon as there were fears about BSE. 'We are very aware of food quality,' he says. 'We are piloting organic food, and even before the crisis we would never have served cheap cuts of meat.'
Are we safe now?
There are still worries about the risk of infection. The Phillips report showed that slaughterhouses in particular did not always follow government guidelines. Once MBM feed (animal feed containing cattle meat and bonemeal, which the Phillips report says was the cause of the BSE epidemic) was banned for cows, farmers were allowed five weeks to use up stocks. Stocks continued to be used to feed pigs and poultry, and some cross- contamination occurred. This loophole was not closed until MBM derived from cows was also banned in pig and poultry feed in September 1990. However, this ban was also widely flouted.
Further, the Environment Agency revealed last month that a Lincolnshire incinerator burning 250 cattle a day since April is releasing ash containing the potentially lethal prion (an abnormal protein which is thought to be the cause of the disease) into the environment. Only one incinerator in the country is capable of achieving the 1,000*C temperatures required to destroy the prion.
There has also been some loosening of controls - the 'beef on the bone' ban ended in 1999 and the Food Standards Agency has ended the ban on using the thymus and intestines of calves aged under six months. Following an outcry, this decision will be reviewed next month.
So, are our children safe? It seems they are very unlikely to become infected now, but whether they have been exposed to BSE in the past - well, we just have to sit and wait. NW
Timetable of a crisis
1970s Cattle probably first infected with BSE (the Phillips report concludes that BSE started with a random mutation, rather than as a form of scrapie - a similar infection in sheep known about for over 200 years).
September 1985 First cow dies from BSE. Two more cases at the end of 1986. The number of cases rapidly increases - the Phillips Report states that this epidemic occurred because meat from infected cattle was fed back to others through the feed containing cattle meat and bonemeal (known as MBM).
June 1988 First meeting of the working party headed by Sir Richard Southwood set up to advise on the implications of BSE. It advised that cattle showing signs of BSE should be destroyed.
July 1988 MBM feed banned in Britain.
February 1989 Southwood working party recommends that ruminant offal and thymus should be banned in baby food. This was extended to all human food in June 1989. However, the working party believed that BSE was probably derived from scrapie, which had never been transmitted to humans. The Southwood report was repeatedly referred to as a scientific appraisal that the risks to humans from BSE were remote.
May 1990 Minister of agriculture John Gummer feeds his young daughter a beefburger to demonstrate that beef is safe. Chief Medical Officer Sir Donald Acheson agrees.
1992-93 Cases of BSE reach a peak with 0.3 per cent of the national herd infected - a total of 36,771 animals in one year.
May 1995 The first known victim of vCJD dies. Other cases diagnosed.
March 1996 Minister of health Stephen Dorrell announces the most likely cause of vCJD is exposure to BSE. Mass slaughter of all cows over 30 months begins.
October 2000 Phillips report published.
November 2000 Food Standards Authority calls for mass screening to test whether BSE has spread to sheep.
