Document Directory
14 Dec 97 - Health chiefs launch mass screening for CJD
12 Dec 97 - Professor advises against beef or lamb for children
11 Dec 97 - Cunningham rejects EU call for lamb on bone ban
11 Dec 97 - New danger is lamb on bone, say scientists
11 Dec 97 - Ban: EU scientists call for inclusion of other meats
10 Dec 97 - EU: Plans for US beef deal thrown out
10 Dec 97 - CJD risk to humans
08 Dec 97 - Alert over tools used in CJD operation
07 Dec 97 - New chainsaw could have averted beef ban
05 Dec 97 - Beef aid move as crisis grows
05 Dec 97 - BSE: Industry fearful as Seac steps into the limelight
04 Dec 97 - Farmers voice their despair at latest government move
04 Dec 97 - Tests on infected cattle led to decision
04 Dec 97 - Doubt raised over pet food
04 Dec 97 -Beef crisis as meat on the bone banned
04 Dec 97 - BSE: UK plans to ban beef on bone after link
04 Dec 97 - BSE: New safety measure leads to increased confusion
04 Dec 97 - BSE: More bad news for farmers and meat eaters
04 Dec 97 - BSE: Powerful sense of dÈjý vu for EU partners
04 Dec 97 - Picking over the bones
04 Dec 97 - Beef trade: EU gesture to US on 'mad cow' rules
04 Dec 97 - At last! A full scale inquiry into the beef ban shambles
04 Dec 97 - Beef on bone banned over CJD fears
03 Dec 97 - Beef on the bone banned in new crisis
03 Dec 97 - CJD victims will remain on donor list
02 Dec 97 - CJD case prompts organ transplant review
02 Dec 97 - CJD test on eye donor six months after grafts
01 Dec 97 - Health alert after eyes of CJD victim are transplanted
01 Dec 97 - CJD case prompts organ transplant review
14 Dec 97 - Health chiefs launch mass screening for CJD
By Victoria Macdonald, Health Correspondent
Telegraph ... Sunday 14 December 1997
A nationwide screening programme for hospital patients and accident victims is to be carried out to assess how far the human form of mad cow disease has spread.
The CJD Surveillance Unit is to test the tonsils of patients who have them removed, and also the brains of people who die in road accidents. It has also emerged that doctors in Oxford have started taking samples from the brains of bodies sent for autopsy , to look for new variant CJD.
The Telegraph has learned that Dr Robert Will, director of the CJD unit, presented his plans to the directors of the UK haemophilia centres during a closed meeting on nvCJD. Dr Will was not available for comment, but a doctor who attended the meeting confirmed that Dr Will laid out a programme for testing living and deceased patients for the disease, which has been linked to BSE.
The programme is expected to be disclosed in a letter to the Lancet within the next few weeks from Dr Will and addressed to doctors and coroners. Under the plan, brain tissue, lymph system and blood of people killed in road accidents would be tested for the prion protein associated with nvCJD.
Only the brains of people aged over 16 would be used. Permission would have to be obtained from relatives, as is also the case in the Oxford research. There were 3,600 road deaths in Britain last year and if even half the relatives agreed to a biopsy, doctors would gain a reasonable marker on how many people are infected.
Dr Will told the meeting that with this study, and that using tonsular tissue, it would take six to 12 months to determine the extent of the disease's spread. Testing would almost certainly be anonymous, with any patient carrying the disease unlikely to be told they are infected .
Ethical precedents have already been set with the anonymous testing of pregnant women to determine the prevalence of HIV in the population. Patients attending clinics for sexually transmitted disease are also asked if they will give blood samples to test for HIV. They are then given the choice of being informed of the result.
While the tonsil test is in the early stage of development, Dr John Collinge and his team at St Mary's Hospital medical school in London have found evidence of the prion protein on tonsular material.
Tests have already been performed on people displaying symptoms of nvCJD, but final confirmation is still only made once the patient has died and a sample of the brain can be taken. The British Medical Association and the Royal College of Pathologists both expressed concerns at the ethical implications of the testing.
The BMA said that as long as the tonsil testing was performed anonymously it would be acceptable, but a spokesman said the association had reservations about the testing of brains of accident victims.
A Department of Health spokesman said: "As far as I know, no proposal has been sent to the department ." However, at Oxford, research using brain tissue from autopsy cases is being paid for by the Department of Health . The work is led by Professor Margaret Esiri, a neuropathologist at the Radcliffe Infirmary.
"If there is anything going on in the general population, we would expect to pick it up, but so far there have been no nvCJD cases," she said. "It is only a tiny sample and we do not know how useful the testing will be."
There had been a mixed response from relatives, "just as there is in organ donation cases".
12 Dec 97 - Professor advises against beef or lamb for children
By Michael Hornsby, Agriculture Correspondent
Times ... Friday 12 December 1997
A distinguished scientist advised parents yesterday to encourage young children to eat chicken rather than beef or lamb because of the risks posed by "mad cow" disease.
Colin Blakemore, head of physiology at Oxford University and president of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, spoke as farmers were offered a glimmer of hope of faster progress towards easing the ban on beef exports. The European Commission said it was bringing forward talks on a proposal that could lift the ban in Northern Ireland, the region least affected by BSE.
The professor said that he had stopped eating beef more than ten years ago, and had now given up lamb as well : "About a month ago, I decided I was not going to eat lamb because I felt there was sufficient evidence that BSE might have passed into sheep. However small the risk, I did not like the taste of lamb enough to feel it was worth taking." His own grown-up children had ignored his advice not to eat beef, but he added: "If I had a baby now, I would certainly not be feeding it lamb or beef."
The fatalities from the variant of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease linked to BSE might be just the beginning, he said. "The missing element is any certainty about the incubation period. If thousands are dying in five or ten years' time, which I hope will not be the case, the ban on beef on the bone will look very prudent."
Earlier this week, a scientific advisory committee in Brussels suggested that most cuts of lamb on the bone from sheep over six months old should be banned in "high-risk" countries such as Britain. The Government's Spongiform Encephalopathy Advisory Committee is to consider whether there should be tougher controls, but is not expected to change its advice.
On Radio 4's World at One, Jack Cunningham, the Agriculture Minister, said: "There is no question of lamb chops, leg or rack of lamb, being off the agenda. They will continue to be available as now."
Jeff Almond, a microbiologist at Reading University and a member of the advisory committee, said: "I do not want to pre-empt our discussions, but we have been through all this before. The Brussels committee had no data we did not have."
On the committee's advice, the Government has already banned consumption of sheep brain, and from January 1 the spinal cord must be removed at abattoirs on animals over 12 months old . Lamb comes from younger animals.
Professor Almond still eats beef and lamb, and said the risk in sheep was entirely theoretical: "How far do you push the precautionary principle? Are you going to knacker an entire industry on the strength of an entirely conjectural risk?"
* A former government scientist in the early 1990s told Channel 4's Dispatches last night that he and a colleague were forced to censor a paper they had written suggesting that BSE had passed to cats through contaminated pet food.
Iain McGill said they were made to remove pointers to a causal link with BSE, which has since been established. The Agriculture Ministry said last night that drafting changes were made but there was no attempt to suppress the information.
11 Dec 97 - Cunningham rejects EU call for lamb on bone ban
by Charles Bremner and Michael Hornsby
Times ... Thursday 11 December 1997
Jack Cunningham, the Agriculture Minister, last night rejected a call from scientists in Brussels for a ban on lamb containing spinal bone.
The scientists want the ban because of a risk that such meat might be infected with the "mad cow" disease BSE .
The Scientific Steering Committee, an influential 16-member advisory panel, said the European Union should apply the ban to meat from all animals more than 12 months old, but added in a footnote that in "high risk" countries, apparently meaning Britain, the age limit should be reduced to six months.
Dr Cunningham said last night that the Government took guidance from its own scientists and not from an advisory committee in Brussels.
The Government had already decided to require the removal of skull and spinal cord (not bone) from all sheep over the age of 12 months from January 1, Dr Cunningham said, and his scientists had advised him that no further action was needed.
The ban proposed by the Brussels committee would chiefly affect the vertebral column and associated nervous tissue.
If a six-month age limit were enforced, much of British lamb production would be affected. Leg joints would appear to be safe, because they contain no spinal bone. Whether ordinary lamb chops would be affected is not clear, and any ban might depend on how the chops are cut from the spinal column.
Of the 16 million sheep slaughtered last year, 12.4 million (78 per cent) were between the ages of five and 12 months, according to the Ministry of Agriculture. Britain has 86,364 sheep farmers, by far the largest number in the EU. Of these, 45,295 are in England, 16,348 in Wales, 14,598 in Scotland and 10,123 in Northern Ireland.
Officials in Brussels said the recommendation by the committee was merely preliminary advice that would still have to be considered by the European Commission and EU member states.
The proposal is unlikely to find support because EU members only reluctantly accepted less drastic controls on sheep meat due to come into effect next month but likely to be postponed until April. The committee's proposal would also apply to cattle over 12 months old, effectively extending throughout the EU the ban on beef on the bone that Britain is introducing. Most other EU states would regard such a move as wholly unnecessary.
Sir David Naish, president of the National Farmers' Union, said: "I am exasperaed by yet another recommendation which would appear to go well beyond what is necessary, taking into account the fact that the scientists themselves say the risk involved to human life is so remote."
John Thorley, chief executive of the National Sheep Association, said: "This is absolute nonsense. We are being asked to change the whole way we rear sheep as a precaution against a risk that does not even exist." The National Federation of Meat and Food Traders said butchers would fiercely resist any move to implement the committee's recommendation. "This would cut a swath through lamb sales and have a significant impact on the industry," John Fuller, the federation's director, said.
The reasoning behind the Brussels' proposal is that BSE might have passed to sheep through contaminated feed and be disguised as scrapie, a very similar brain condition that has been present in sheep for centuries without harming humans.
The Government's Spongiform Encephalopathy Advisory Committee has long accepted that this is a theoretical risk, although tests have so far found no evidence of BSE in sheep.
The committee recommended last year that the Government should ban consumption of the spinal cords and brains of sheep, but only from those over 12 months old. Nearly all lamb sold in shops is from animals younger than that.
Professor Richard Lacey, a leading microbiologist who was among the first scientists to raise the alarm about beef, said last night that he could see no danger from lamb and described the Brussels proposals as "wildly over the top".
The Brussels steering committee, which is composed of scientists from all 15 member states, was set up under Emma Bonino, the Consumer Health Commissioner.
11 Dec 97 - New danger is lamb on bone, say scientists
By David Brown, Agriculture Editor and Toby Helm
Telegraph ... Thursday 11 December 1997
Bishop hits at ministry failure to aid farmers
A ban on the sale of lamb on the bone from animals more than a year old was recommended by EU scientists yesterday, to avoid the remote risk that sheep might be infected with mad cow disease.
Only a week after the Government decided to outlaw beef on the bone, the European Commission's scientific steering committee recommended that most meat on the bone from cattle, sheep and goats over 12 months should be taken off the market in countries with a history of BSE.
They also said countries with high levels of BSE - Britain has suffered most cases - should ban lamb on the bone from animals more than six months old.
But the move, which further angered butchers and farmers, was dismissed by Jack Cunningham, the Agriculture Minister, who said enough safeguards had been taken for now. Marks & Spencer and Safeway both said they would not remove lamb on the bone from their shelves until they had received firm advice from the Government.
Safeway said: "The definite recommendation so far is not to eat lamb on the bone which is over 12 months old, which we do not sell anyway.
"Until we have read the report and had instructions from the Government, we will not be taking any action to remove any of our lamb, which is under 12 months."
Marks & Spencer added that they also did not sell meat from lambs over 12 months and would wait for government direction about the possibility of removing lamb over six months old.
The Government had already decided that the brain and spinal cord from UK and imported sheep more than 12 months old would be banned from sale from Jan 1.
Mr Cunningham dismissed the EU committee as "a purely advisory body with no legislative powers" and added: "The UK Government takes its advice on BSE from the independent Seac committee."
Seac - the Spongiform Encephalopathies Advisory Committee - had recommended on Dec 2, he said, that there was "no reason to take further action over sheep or goats at this time".
But it emerged that British scientists - including two members of Seac - are also worried that consumers may be at risk from BSE in sheep.
Prof John Collinge and Prof Jeffrey Almond, members of the team whose recent report persuaded Mr Cunningham to implement the new beef ban, will say in Channel 4's Dispatches tonight that they believe that BSE has spread to sheep.
Scientists already believe that BSE was caused when cattle were fed rations contaminated with the remains of sheep infected with a similar fatal brain disease called scrapie.
BSE, in turn, is suspected of causing a new form of the fatal Creutzfedt-Jakob disease in young people. Prof Collinge said: "It is likely that some BSE will have transmitted to sheep. Given the amount of contaminated feed that was fed to sheep and given that we know that sheep are susceptible to BSE by the oral route, it will be surprising if some cases haven't happened."
A senior EC official said that if a ban was applied to animals of six months upwards it would have "very substantial knock-on effects".
Britain, as the EU's largest sheep producer, would be hardest hit. About 1.9 million sheep a year - roughly 12 per cent of the total number slaughtered for meat - fall into the over-12-month category. Many of these animals are in fact younger, due to a quirk in the traditional method of categorising sheep.
But 15 million lambs are sent for slaughter each year and thousands of UK farmers - mainly on the hills and moors - rely heavily on exports to survive. These exports are worth £343 million a year, of which £40 million is from live lambs sent mainly to France.
The Meat and Livestock Commission said last night that it was "inundated" with calls from worried butchers.
Farmers' leaders appealed for calm as a new wave of alarm swept through an industry already reeling from the beef on the bone curbs and a 47 per cent collapse in incomes.
Just as cattle prices have fallen to their lowest levels for many years, lamb prices at market have also slumped to about £12 an animal less than 12 months ago. Farmers say they would be ruined by a further plunge.
Sir David Naish, president of the National Farmers' Union, appealed for people to keep "a sense of proportion" and said: "I am exasperated by yet another recommendation which would appear to go well beyond what is necessary, taking into account the fact that scientists themselves say the risk involved to human life is so remote."
Sir David is to hold emergency talks with Emma Bonino, EU commissioner for consumer affairs in Brussels today.
11 Dec 97 - Ban: EU scientists call for inclusion of other meats
By Michael Smith, Alison Maitland, George Parker and Maggie Urry
Financial Times ... Wednesday 11 December 1997
The European Commission's scientific advisory body yesterday called for a widening of its ban on the sale of some cattle, sheep and goat parts out of fears over the spread of BSE , or "mad cow" disease.
The recommendation of the 16-member Scientific Steering Committee could lead to the end of T-bone steaks and severely restrict the supply of lamb-on-the-bone across Europe.
The committee said the intestines of cattle, sheep and goats of all ages, and the lungs, vertebral column and dorsal root ganglia - a cluster of nerves inside the column - of animals more than one year old should be added to the list of specified risk material (SRM) "if they do not originate from a BSE-free country ".
The move comes only a week after a decision by the UK government to ban sales of beef on the bone from next Tuesday. "This is bad news for the beef market," said Copa, the European farmers' organisation. It said consumption and prices would take another knock just as sales were recovering from the March 1996 crisis.
Beef on the bone accounts for 20-25 per cent of sales on the continent, compared with 5 per cent in the UK, said Costa Golfidis, livestock representative. The ban on boned mutton was less worrying because most lamb sold on the bone was under 12 months old, he added. However, in a footnote the scientists also suggested that the SRM ban could be applied to animals of less than six months.
Ian Gardiner, policy director of the National Farmers' Union of England and Wales, said of the scientists' report: "It is impossible to assess what is the true risk. I wouldn't get out of bed if I listened to these people."
Meanwhile, William Hague, Tory leader, last night announced that his party would vote against the government's plan to ban beef on the bone, claiming ministers had overreacted to new scientific advice. "Consumers are sick and tired of not being allowed to make their own choices, based on sensible and accurate information," said Mr Hague's official spokesman.
The shadow cabinet agreed to oppose government orders implementing the ban next week on the grounds that it was a "disproportionate response to a one-in-a-billion risk".
The European scientists' report came on the day the European Commission decided to press for a three-month delay to a ban on the use of "specified risk material" from cattle in some industrial products including food and medicines. This will be discussed by member states next week.
The Commission's recommendation for the ban to come into effect from April 1 rather than January 1 will be seen as a climbdown amid growing divisions between member states on the ban. However, it was welcomed in the US, where Washington has argued that the ban on such material puts billions of dollars of trade at risk since cattle derivatives including tallow are used in a wide range of products. It believes the ban, which the commission decided to implement last July, with only partial backing from EU member countries, is not justified if applied to its cattle and has threatened a trade war. The three-month delay will intensify friction between EU member countries since some -including Germany, Austria, Spain and Italy - argue that they are BSE-free and should therefore be exempted from the ban. Such exemptions would be resisted by the UK and other countries with BSE.
10 Dec 97 - EU: Plans for US beef deal thrown out
By Michael Smith in Brussels
Financial Times ... Wednesday 10 December 1997
European Commission plans for defusing a trade clash with the US over cattle derivatives were thrown into confusion last night after officials from member states failed to back them.
The 20 commissioners will consider options which include a postponement of the ban, which would prohibit use of the cattle parts most at risk of carrying the BSE mad cow disease at their weekly meeting today. The ban is due to take effect from January 1.
The Commission decided on the ban last July with the support of only seven member states but was shortly afterwards threatened with a trade dispute by the US.
The ban could block billions of dollars of US pharmaceuticals and cosmetics exports to Europe. Most pharmaceutical and cosmetics contain derivatives of tallow or gelatin, produced by boiling animal carcasses, usually including banned cattle parts, called specified risk materials (SRM).
The US insists it is free of BSE and therefore should escape the ban. The Commission has rejected this proposal but last week proposed a piecemeal solution involving temporary exemptions from the rules for certain products. Under the plan:
***** Pharmaceutical products approved for marketing after the start of 1998 would not be allowed to use SRMs in their manufacture, but those already approved would be given exemption to use SRMs until January 1999 to allow industry time to adapt.
***** Existing products and those manufactured during the transition period could continue to be sold until expiry of their shelf life.
***** Certain medicines using SRMs would have a longer transition period, until the end of 1999.
Derivatives of tallow would be approved for use provided they were heat-treated by one of three approved methods.
When representatives of the 15 member states met yesterday in the EU's standing veterinary committee they failed to take an expected vote on the proposals. This suggests the proposals could not command a bare majority. That does not rule out the possibility that the proposals could be adopted at a meeting of farm ministers next week, but it makes it less likely.
With the January 1 deadline approaching and the Commission preparing to wind down for the Christmas break, time is running out to find a solution before the ban is implemented.
10 Dec 97 - CJD risk to humans
Letters to the editor
Evening Standard ... Tuesday 9 December 1997
As a scientist who has worked with BSE, I was staggered by your reporting of the latest beef crisis. The risk of CJD from beef is comparable to smoking.
Your chance of dying of lung cancer the year you smoke your first cigarette is millions to one. Instead, you will die from 10 to 20 years later from smokings long-term effect. The new variant of CJD would be expected to have a 20 year incubation period.
Scientists working on BSE infected tissues wear two pairs of rubber gloves and avoid directly touching any meat. But then they, unlike your statistician, have seen the devastation wrought on a human body whose brain has turned to sponge.
Hugh Thomas, Tufnell Park, London, N7
08 Dec 97 - Alert over tools used in CJD operation
By David Fletcher, Health Correspondent
Telegraph ... Monday 8 December 1997
Fears that surgical instruments used to remove parts of the eyes of a woman subsequently found to be suffering from CJD could have infected other patients are being investigated .
The instruments were used on Marion Hamilton, 53, the Scots woman who died of lung cancer and whose corneas and sclera, the white part of the eye, were removed for transplant operations before it was realised that she had been suffering from CJD.
Three patients who received the implants are being monitored in case they contract the disease but there are now fears that further patients could have been infected by instruments used on Mrs Hamilton. A Scottish Office spokesman said: "We are aware that concerns have arisen because of a potential risk of transmission of CJD through contamination of the instruments used in the retrieval of Mrs Hamilton's eyes.
"The risk of transmission is lower than that from transplantation of eye tissue. However we have taken expert advice on the level of risk, and the consultants concerned are being contacted. Unless a patient hears from a consultant, there is no need for any individual to worry."
Health guidelines recommend the destruction of instruments used to operate on CJD sufferers because sterilisation does not remove the threat of infection. The spokesman said the instruments have now been destroyed, but would not say on how many people they might have been used.
An inquiry has already been launched to establish how eye tissue from Mrs Hamilton, from Clackmannanshire, central Scotland, came to be transplanted into three other people. It will be led by Sir William Stewart, a chief scientific adviser to the Cabinet Office from 1990-1995.
Mr Robert Johnson, president of the British Transplantation Society, which represents transplant specialists, said the risk was "less than negligible" that CJD could be transmitted via surgical instruments. He said: "In corneal transplants a grasping instrument is used to hold the cornea and the only other instrument to touch it is a knife blade, but both are disposable and would have been discarded afterwards."
07 Dec 97 - New chainsaw could have averted beef ban
by Steve Connor, Science Correspondent
Sunday Times ... Sunday 7 December 1997
The meat industry rejected a new chainsaw with two parallel blades that could have averted last week's "mad cow" crisis, according to the government's chief scientific adviser on BSE.
Professor John Pattison, head of the Spongiform Encephalopathy Advisory Committee (SEAC), said this weekend that using the double-bladed saw in abattoirs would have made it unnecessary to introduce the latest ban on the sale of beef on the bone. The chainsaw would have enabled the meat industry to remove spinal cords intact, along with the associated boney swellings of the dorsal root ganglia - which were recently found to be capable of transmitting BSE.
"If we had an operational machine that would do it next week it would have solved the problem very well indeed," Pattison said.
The Meat and Livestock Commission, which had been working on the double-bladed saw for nearly two years, said that technical problems over how to use the saw without stripping out the valuable portions of meat that run alongside the backbone led to the project being abandoned.
Colin Maclean, director-general of the commission, said: "The problem is that you would have to open the distance between the blades too wide to catch all the dorsal root ganglia because they vary in their distance from the spinal cord as you go down the spine."
This would have stripped out the most valuable cuts of meat. "If you had to widen the saw you would actually destroy quite large lumps of meat. We concluded that the saw had had it. The money you would have taken off the carcass would have been enormous."
Pattison said the risk of catching BSE from eating meat on the bone was already extremely low, but it would become so small within two years that he envisaged the ban being rescinded.
Cabinet ministers including Jack Cunningham, agriculture minister, will meet this week to consider the crisis. They will review public order at ports where farmers are protesting against cheap beef imports, and consider the prospects of securing more EU money for beef farmers. A source said: "Ministers have just been given figures showing the average farm income has dropped by 37% over the past year."
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05 Dec 97 - Beef crisis has Blair running for safe cover
by Charles Reiss, Political Editor
Evening Standard ... Friday 5 December 1997
Tony Blair ran for cover today amid the still-growing hail of protest over the sudden ban on sales of beef on the bone.
The Prime Minister came close to an apology, saying that no one would have wanted the crisis to have erupted in the way that it did and adding: "We regret that very much."
But he suggested that the man really responsible for the decision was the Government's chief medical officer, Sir Kenneth Calman.
He, said Mr Blair had given such "strong" advice that ministers were left with virtually no choice but to follow it .
Mr Blair's defence came as farmers continued to blockade ports in protest at imports of cheap beef from Ireland.
The public delivered their own, scathing verdict with a rush to buy T-bone steaks, ribs and other cuts soon to be outlawed because of the tiny possibility that they might carry BSE.
Mr Blair appeared before reporters to launch the new logo for Britain's presidency of the European Union, which starts in January. But he soon found himself questioned on the beef row.
The Prime Minister acknowledged the Government was taking heavy criticism. But he went on: "I can assure you many who criticise us now would be the first to criticise us if the chief medical officer gave us his strong advice - and I quote, 'strong' advice - and we were to ignore it."
As Mr Blair spoke, Downing Street condemned the farmers' action, saying it would damage Britain's already-faultering effort in Europe to get the ban on beef exports removed.
The Irish government had been Britain's strongest ally in the attempt to get the ban lifted, a No 10 spokesman pointed out.
Downing Street also rejected the farmers' pleas for more cash, saying that "vast amounts of money" had already been pumped in to help the industry cope with the BSE crisis.
Earlier, furious farmers had clashed with police in a demonstration at Dover. Three protesters were arrested as around 250 farmers staged the overnight demo, waving banners and placards saying "If the French can blockade, so can we".
At one stage, police threatened to turn dogs on the farmers, claiming that officers had been assaulted.
Later, Foreign Secretary Robin Cook issued the Government's sternest warning so far to farmers not to "take the law into their own hands" by blockading beef imports.
"These lorry routes must be open and that is why action has been taken to make sure they are," he said.
"Farmers have faced very serious pressure on their incomes and their livelihoods "
"But they cannot stop other people going about their livelihoods."
Mr Cook spoke out on Radio Four's Today programme after the growing dispute threatened to cast a pall over the high-profile launch of Britain's six-month presidency of the European Union, which starts on 1 January.
He said Britain could not take a strong line against French blockades and then apply "quite different standards" to Irish lorries trying to get into Britain.
05 Dec 97 - Beef aid move as crisis grows
By George Jones and Toby Helm
Telegraph ... Friday 5 December 1997
An emergency package of financial help for the beef industry was being drawn up by ministers last night after protests by farmers against cheap meat imports threatened to spread to ports across Britain.
But as unrest grew among farmers determined to block cheap foreign imports, Jack Cunningham, the Minister of Agriculture, issued a strong warning that they were not above the law. There was also confusion over when the ban on the sale of beef on the bone would be introduced.
Officials admitted that the Government had to consult food safety bodies before the ban could be implemented - a process that would take at least until the end of next week, and could last several weeks.
Last night, farmers from across the South-East were marching on Dover in an attempt to prevent foreign beef coming into the country. A group was also preparing to picket the Channel tunnel. Sue Scott, the National Farmers' Union spokesman in Kent, said: "Farmers have simply had enough over the last 18 months. Negotiation has not worked and they are frustrated and fed up."
Farmers also blockaded Seaforth in Liverpool, Stranraer and Cairnryan in south-west Scotland, and Holyhead and Fishguard in Wales. But Mr Cunningham said the protesters were "short-sighted".
"When French lorry drivers were blockading French ports, farmers here were the first to complain, rightly so, that their interests were being affected," he said. "Farmers are not above the law - that has got to be made clear to to them."
He described the protests as the "illegal blockading of legitimate trade" and hinted that the police would be urged to intervene to keep the ports clear.
His warning followed talks in London with his Irish counterpart, Joe Walsh, who lodged a strong protest over the way that Welsh farmers had prevented Irish beef reaching Britain.
The Government also came under pressure from Brussels to end the blockades. Franz Fischler, the EU agriculture commissioner, said Britain would face legal moves if the dispute continued to damage cross-border trade and free movement.
He wrote to Mr Cunningham reminding the Government that it must do everything possible to keep all frontiers open for EU trade and calling on the Government to provide evidence that ministers and officials were actively working to guarantee free circulation.
Butchers reported "panic buying" among customers stocking up on ribs of beef, T-bone steak and oxtail before the cuts are outlawed after new scientific evidence showing that the bones could harbour the BSE agent, which is believed to be responsible for the human equivalent, Creutzfeld-Jakob disease (CJD).
Shops said the prospect of the ban was pushing up sales with no evidence that customers were shying away from beef. Gordon Hepburn, national chairman of the Guild of Q Butchers, said he was not surprised by the reaction of customers. "They know they've got more chance of being run over coming into the shop than eating the beef," he said.
Traders at Smithfield market in London said they would go on trading in meat on the bone until the ban came into place. Despite urging farmers to call off their protests, Mr Cunningham acknowledged the seriousness of their plight.
At yesterday's Cabinet meeting, he said beef farmers were facing "very difficult times" and said the Government was monitoring the situation - though he did not believe that the latest ban would "devastate" the industry, as 95 per cent of beef was already sold off the bone.
At Question Time in the Commons, when MPs on all sides warned of a "major crisis" for livestock farmers, Mr Cunningham confirmed that ministers were looking at financial help.
"We are discussing how and whether we may be able to provide extra support for them," he said. It is understood that the Government is looking at ways of increasing support for hill farmers, possibly by switching some payments to the hard-pressed beef sector.
Downing Street yesterday confirmed that an inquiry into the handling of BSE - since the epidemic was first identified in Britain in 1986 to the present day - would be announced before Christmas. It is likely to be held in public and to be asked to report within a year.
A Downing Street spokesman said it was important for families who has lost relatives from CJD that might have been contracted from infected beef to know the full facts. Confirmation of the inquiry was welcomed by Dorothy Churchill, whose son Stephen was among the first victims of the new strain of CJD and who has been campaigning for an inquiry. "It must be judicial and independent if it to get to the bottom of this dreadful affair," she said.
The European Commission confirmed that it had demanded a copy of the report by the Spongiform Encephalopathy Advisory Committee which revealed that BSE had been detected in bone marrow. It will be examined by an influential committee of EU scientists at a meeting in Brussels on Monday.
If the independent scientists conclude that the evidence is sufficiently strong to merit action at European level, they could recommend that the EU follow Britain's lead and ban sales of beef on the bone across Europe.
05 Dec 97 - BSE: Industry fearful as Seac steps into the limelight
By Clive Cookson, Science Editor
Financia Times ... Friday 5 December 1997
The initials SEAC used to strike fear into Britain's classrooms. Now they terrify the country's farmers.
The School Examination and Assessment Council oversaw public examinations and national testing until 1993 (when it merged into the new School Curriculum and Assessment Authority). At that time the Spongiform Encephalopathy Advisory Committee was an obscure group of seven scientists who advised the ministries of agriculture and health about spongy brain diseases, such as BSE in cattle, scrapie in sheep and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in people.
While the educational Seac was constantly in the news during the early 1990s, battling to maintain school standards, its scientific namesake - set up in 1990 - worked quietly in the background.
The scientific Seac began to impinge on farmers during 1995, as people began to speculate about a possible link between BSE and a few cases of CJD that were occurring unexpectedly in teenagers.
There were two key events in the development of Seac that year: the appointment of John Pattison, dean of the medical school at University College London, as chairman, and the addition of four members to broaden the scientific expertise of the committee. Up until then, Seac had been narrowly based, with a bias towards veterinary medicine. Seac really hit the headlines in March 1996 when it gave ministers the grim news that 10 cases of "new variant CJD" in young people were probably caused by eating BSE-contaminated beef in the 1980s.
The shocked government immediately accepted Seac's recommendations for tighter controls on beef, and all subsequent advice has been implemented in full.
This week's proposed ban on the sale of beef on the bone - resulting from new research by Ministry of Agriculture scientists into the transmission of BSE between animals - is the latest, and potentially the most devastating, example.
The four most influential of Seac's 12 members are probably:
Professor Pattison, the chairman, is a medical microbiologist whose public stature has grown considerably over the past 18 months. He does not attempt false reassurance and says the UK will have to wait a few more years to discover whether it faces a health calamity through a CJD epidemic caused by BSE.
Robert Will, deputy chairman, is a consultant neurologist and director of the National CJD Surveillance Unit in Edinburgh. He led the medical team that identified the new variant of human disease linked to BSE.
Peter Smith is an epidemiologist at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. He was appointed in September to chair a subgroup to Seac that will monitor any emerging CJD epidemic.
John Collinge runs the prion disease group - one of the most active research teams investigating CJD and BSE - at St Mary's Hospital medical school in London.
04 Dec 97 - Farmers voice their despair at latest government move
Michael Hornsby
Times ... Thursday 4 December 1997
FRESH BLOW BRINGS DEMANDS FOR CASH AID
Farmers reacted with anger and astonishment yesterday to the ban. Although less than 5 per cent of beef is sold bone-in, beef producers said they feared that the announcement would cause panic among consumers and a catastrophic collapse of already low prices for cattle.
There was also concern that the decision would be seized on by other European Union countries as a further reason for delaying any easing of the ban on British beef exports.
Anthony Gibson, regional director of the National Farmers' Union in southwest England, a prime cattle area, said: "This is a body-blow to an industry already on its knees. Whatever the rights and wrongs of the new precautions, the impact they are bound to have on an already depressed market makes the case for support for the beef industry unanswerable."
Mr Gibson said the Government must now apply to Brussels for funds to compensate British farmers for the strength of the pound, which had made imported beef and other foodstuffs cheaper and blunted their competitiveness.
Sir David Naish, the national president of the NFU, recognised the need for the Government to act on scientific advice, but said the decision would cause "a great deal of despair among farmers after all they have been through".
Peter Stephens, a beef farmer and past chairman of the Cornish NFU, said: "This has come like a bolt out of the blue when we least needed it. If the scientists are now saying marrow could be dangerous, are they going to ban blood next?"
Farmers were already angry because of the Government's failure to apply for £500 million earmarked in Brussels to compensate them for the effect of currency fluctuations. Other EU countries have obtained such aid. So far Jack Cunningham, the Agriculture Minister, has refused to heed farmers' pleas, arguing that British taxpayers would end up paying for the cost of 70 per cent of the aid because of the way national contributions to the EU budget are calculated.
Huge sums of money have already been spent or set aside to help the beef industry to cope with the crisis over BSE.
Things took a turn for the worse in March of last year when the Conservative Government announced that eating BSE-infected beef was probably the cause of a new strain of the human brain condition Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD), which has so far killed 22 people.
In 1995 total purchases of beef, including processed products, amounted to £4 billion. Last year, this dropped to £3.1 billion. Beef consumption is expected to reach 839,000 tonnes this year, up 100,000 on 1996, though still below the pre-crisis level of 901,000.
Other EU countries, though they have some cases of BSE, are not subject to any limit on the age of the animals they sell. This has been one of the causes of the port blockades by Welsh farmers protesting against cheap Irish beef.
Hundreds of Scottish farmers last night mobbed the dockside at Stranraer and succeeded in preventing four lorryloads of Irish beef from entering Scotland.
The drivers of refrigerated lorries containing beef from both Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic agreed to return with their loads after meeting farmers' leaders, harbour authorities and police at the port in southwest Scotland.
To cheers, the four lorries which had been kept back after the ferry arrived from Larne, in Northern Ireland, turned round ready to reload.
04 Dec 97 - Tests on infected cattle led to decision
by Nigel Hawkes
Times ... Thursday 4 December 1997
The results that persuaded the Government to ban beef on the bone come from experiments in which cattle were deliberately infected with large doses of BSE in their feed. Tissues were tested for infectivity at different periods after infection.
The infected cattle were slaughtered in groups of three at four-month intervals after infection and tissues tested by injection into the brains of mice. The objective was to establish if they carried the BSE infective agent before the cattle showed any symptoms of the disease.
The latest experiments, which form the basis of the new advice from the Government's Spongiform Encephalopathy Advisory Committee (SEAC), showed that two tissues previously not excluded might be infectious - the dorsal root ganglia found within the bones of the spine, and the bone marrow. The ganglia are nerve branches emerging from the spinal cord and within the bone, which would normally be found only in beef sold "on the bone".
The ganglia were found to be infectious in cattle 32 months after infection with BSE but not in animals 26 months after infection. Clinical signs did not develop in these animals until 35 months after infection. That means there is a three-month gap in which these organs, from apparently healthy cattle, might pass on the disease.
To play safe, the advisory body has assumed that infectivity may be present earlier, seven months before symptoms appear. Under present slaughter policies, a very few cattle incubating the disease may enter the food chain: six this year and three in 1998.
The risk that this may cause any cases of human CJD is very low. SEAC estimates only a 5 per cent chance of a single case next year.
Professor John Pattison, chairman of SEAC, said that the experiments, carried out at the Central Veterinary Laboratory at Weybridge, Surrey, had failed to find any infectivity in muscles or blood.
04 Dec 97 - Doubt raised over pet food
Staff Correspondent
Times ... Thursday 4 December 1997
Makers of pet food were unsure yesterday of whether the Government's ban on the sale of beef on the bone would mean that they would have to withdraw products containing bone marrow.
Barbara Shaw, spokeswoman for the Pet Food Manufacturers' Association, said that its members exercised strict quality controls, including factory floor inspections by vets, to ensure that only raw materials fit for human consumption were used in the production of pet food. She added: "We are adopting a cautious stance until there is a thorough review of all the evidence."
04 Dec 97 -Beef crisis as meat on the bone banned
By George Jones and Aisling Irwin
Telegraph ... Thursday 4 December 1997
The Government imposed a ban on the sale of all cuts of beef on the bone yesterday in the wake of evidence showing that the agent that causes mad cow disease and its human equivalent, Creutzfeld-Jakob Disease, could be transmitted through the spinal column and bone marrow of cattle.
It will mean that T-bone steaks, roast ribs of beef and oxtail will no longer be sold across the counter or served in restaurants. New restrictions will be placed on the manufacture of stock cubes and soups. But the Government has decided against removing existing supplies of stock cubes and oxtail soup from the shelves of shops and supermarkets because the risk was "very small".
Announcing the new curbs, Jack Cunningham, the Minister of Agriculture, insisted that British beef was still safe to eat and said the ban was a precautionary measure to "protect consumer confidence". The restrictions are expected to be in place within a week. In the meantime, Mr Cunningham said consumers could decide for themselves whether to take the small risk of eating meat on the bone.
Tesco and Sainsbury supermarket chains immediately announced that they had removed all bone-in beef from cattle over six months old from their shelves.
The ban is a severe blow to the meat industry at a time when public confidence in beef was returning after a series of scares over BSE and CJD. Welsh farmers who have already blockaded ports to stop imports of cheap Irish beef yesterday threatened to extend their protest to supermarkets and distribution warehouses.
The new restrictions were imposed within hours of the Government's expert advisers, the Spongiform Encephalopathy Advisory Committee (Seac), reporting that BSE "infectivity" had been found within nervous tissue in spinal column bones, which would be left with the bone when the meat was cut off the spine.
Scientists have also given warning that BSE may be found in the bone marrow in cattle at a late stage of the disease. According to Seac, experimental animals showed the infectivity only after receiving "a heavy dose of infected bovine tissue".
It was present only in cattle aged over 30 months - beyond the age at which they are allowed to be used for meat for human consumption. Seac scientists calculated that only six animals which could pose a risk from the new source of infectivity were likely to enter the food chain this year.
They also stressed that there was absolutely no evidence that muscle, meat or blood could transmit the BSE agent. The committee's findings leaked out yesterday morning and were broadcast on television before Mr Cunningham could make a statement in the Commons.
Mr Cunningham disclosed that he had opted for the toughest safeguards recommended by his advisers - requiring that no beef with the bone in from cattle over six months old should be sold to the consumer.
He said that after taking advice from the Sir Kenneth Calman, the Government's Chief Medical Officer, he had concluded that it would not be acceptable to allow tissues shown to transmit BSE to remain within the human food chain. The requirement to "debone" beef will apply to all meat, whether from British farmers or imported supplies.
Deboning will be able to take place in cutting plants, butchers' shops, catering establishments or other commercial premises. Bones will not be allowed to be sold, given to consumers or used in the preparation of food - as the cooking process, such as boiling a bone to make soup or stock, might release infectious tissue.
Manufacturers will not be allowed to make soup, stock cubes and gelatin using the bone from British cattle over six months old. Mr Cunningham said the Government saw no need to remove oxtail soup from the shelves - despite banning further sales of oxtail - because the infected tissue was not found in the tail of cattle. The new restrictions will not apply to pet foods.
Since the initial disclosures of the link between BSE and the new variant CJD, the Government has made a series of restrictions, which have raised fears that the BSE agent may be present in more parts of cattle than first thought.
Only five per cent of beef is consumed on the bone at present, but the new curbs are likely to dash any prospect of an early lifting of the worldwide ban on British beef, imposed 20 months ago. The Labour Government is continuing a £4 billion programme started by its predecessors to eradicate BSE from the British herd by 2001, with thousands of cattle over 30 months old being slaughtered.
Tony Blair confirmed yesterday that the Government was preparing to announce a full inquiry into the handling of the BSE crisis, including how the disease was allowed to develop through the use of animal material in cattle feed.
In the Commons, Mr Blair came under pressure to consider compensation for farmers. Paddy Ashdown, the Liberal Democrat leader, described the ban as a "bitter, terrible blow" for the beef industry.
Mr Blair said he understood the plight of the beef farmers and "how great a blow" the latest announcement was. But he gave no hint of additional government help for farmers.
One beef farmer, Richard Barter, who has 127 cattle at Bovey Tracey, south Devon, said it could be "the end of the line". "I am completely gutted, the cost of boning is going to be put back on to the farmer. We are not making any money now, how are we going to cope?"
Anthony Gibson, south west regional director of the National Farmers' Union, said it was a a body blow to an industry already on its knees. The impact of the new precautions on a depressed market made the case for support for the beef industry "unanswerable".
Protesting beef farmers succeeded in turning back four lorries, carrying around 30 tons of Irish beef each, that had arrived at Stranraer from Larne yesterday.
04 Dec 97 - BSE: UK plans to ban beef on bone after link
By George Parker, Maggie Urry and Michael Smith in London
Financial Times ... Thursday 4 December 1997
UK hopes of securing an end to the European Union beef export ban were dealt a serious blow yesterday when the government revealed that BSE, or mad cow disease, might be transmitted through beef bones.
Jack Cunningham, agriculture minister, responded by announcing plans to ban the sale of beef on the bone, including cuts such as T-bone steaks, ribs and oxtails.
Although those products account for only 5 per cent of the UK beef market, the government's new scientific advice will spark renewed concern across the Continent.
Mr Cunningham conceded that, in the light of the new advice, he could not give any guarantee that consumers had not eaten BSE-infected beef over the past 18 months.
Yesterday's announcement will cause further alarm in Britain's beef industry, where farmers are already suffering from depressed prices and falling incomes.
Some Welsh farmers have recently blockaded ferry ports to halt trucks carrying cheap Irish beef imports.
European Commission officials reacted with weary dismay at the latest beef scare to emerge from the UK, the result of new research by the Spongiform Encephalopathy Advisory Committee (Seac).
Mr Cunningham said that the risks to human health posed by infectivity in cattle bones was "very, very, small". Some Tory MPs responded by suggesting he should have allowed the sale of beef on the bone to continue, and should have allowed consumers to use their discretion.
Professor John Pattison, chairman of Seac, estimated that only about three animals out of a total of 2.2m cattle which "will go into the human food chain in 1998" could pose a threat to human health. But Mr Cunningham defended his action.
"I could not contemplate having this advice and knowingly allowing infected BSE material into the food chain," he said.
The minister also promised an announcement soon on a possible public inquiry into the UK government's handling of the BSE crisis, which would inevitably focus largely on the actions of the previous Tory administration.
Mr Cunningham admitted that the new scientific advice could make it more difficult for the UK to obtain a lifting of the beef ban, but insisted: "I am committed to being open and honest about this problem - in Europe and in Britain."
The UK beef industry has been in a state of crisis since the EU imposed its ban on exports in March 1996, when Seac first suggested a link between BSE and Creutzfeldt Jakob disease, its human equivalent.
Farmers yesterday expressed dismay at the "drip feed" of evidence emerging from the scientists, and its impact on consumer confidence and initiatives to persuade the EU to end the ban.
Yesterday's announcement will be followed by a brief consultation period before orders are laid in Parliament to implement the beef-on-the-bone ban, which could be in effect before Christmas.
Downing Street argued that the proposed ban would help to ensure consumer confidence.
"We have taken decisive action which will help, not hinder, the lifting of the European ban," the prime minister's official spokesman said.
But Germany was already antagonistic to UK plans for an early lifting of the beef export ban, arguing that the UK must first demonstrate that it can halt illegal exports of beef.
It says it has detected imports from the UK amounting to 600 tonnes since the ban was introduced, compared to an average of 50 tonnes a year prior to the ban.
The news comes at a bad time for the farming industry. Earlier this week, the government said farm incomes would fall by 37 per cent in real terms this year.
Farmers pleas for additional compensation from the government have so far not been met.
Sir David Naish, president of the National Farmers' Union, said the news could be "the last straw" for the industry, which was already "flat on its back".
He said he was concerned that the handling of the proposed ban could cause another crisis of consumer confidence, undermining beef prices further.
04 Dec 97 - BSE: New safety measure leads to increased confusion
By Maggie Urry
Financial Times ... Thursday 4 December 1997
The beef industry was thrown into confusion yesterday by the statement from Jack Cunningham, the agriculture minister, that the government is to ban beef sold on the bone.
While little beef is sold on the bone in the UK, a ban would mean the end of oxtail, ribs of beef and T-bone steaks.
"It's March 1996 all over again," said Les Armstrong, who runs a 150 head beef herd in Cumbria, referring to the start of the beef crisis when the Conservative government admitted there could be a link between bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) in cattle and a new variant of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, the human equivalent.
With only 5 per cent of the UK's beef sold on the bone, the impact on the industry - in terms of costs - could be small.
"The cost is really confidence," said Sir David Naish, president of the National Farmers' Union. Following the March 1996 announcement, beef consumption slumped and has only in recent months regained pre-crisis levels.
Earlier this week the government said farmers' incomes would fall by 37 per cent in real terms this year. Beef farming is one of the harder hit sectors of the industry.
The NFU and others in the food sector stressed that safety of consumers was their prime concern.
The fear in the farming and food industry is that sales will drop sharply again.
The industry is in much poorer shape now than when the original BSE crisis broke and less able to cope with a slide in demand.
"It could not have come at a worse time," said Mr Armstrong. Beef prices have fallen to their lowest level for 20 years.
Mr Armstrong said cattle he sent to market this week was "struggling to reach 90p per kg, that's 30p down on what it should be".
"I've seen a third out of my income since March last year. Each week we keep hoping its going to get better," Mr Armstrong said.
"The industry is flat on its back," said Sir David. This week farmers have been protesting about imports of beef which have undercut prices in the UK. "This could be the straw that breaks the camel's back," added Sir David.
He said even before the ban comes into effect, retailers would be likely to remove all bones from beef as consumers would have been alerted to the question over safety.
Sir David said consumers should be reassured that this was a "belt and braces measure". He said the news would "have to be handled very carefully" so as not to cause another panic among consumers.
Hill farmers could be particularly hard hit by the move as they are more dependent on livestock farming. The Hill Farming Initiative, a lobby group, said a ban "will shake consumer confidence and further compound the misery of hill farmers".
Indications yesterday were that the bones would be removed by processors or butchers who currently do the work, and there would not be a requirement that deboning took place in registered premises.
This should mean that the effect of a ban on the industry's work would be limited.
Many in the industry called for imports of beef to be subject to the same stringent controls that domestically-produced beef is.
04 Dec 97 - BSE: More bad news for farmers and meat eaters
By Clive Cookson, Science Editor
Financial Times ... Thursday 4 December 1997
The ban on beef on the bone is the latest case of scientific statements bringing bad news about BSE and its human counterpart, Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, to farmers and consumers.
From the first "mad cows" identified in 1985 to last month's warning that the UK blood supply might be contaminated with CJD from infected donors, the news has been unremittingly grim. Yesterday's announcement may turn out to be the worst blow since March last year, when the government first acknowledged a probable link between BSE-contaminated beef and a new variant of CJD that was beginning to kill young adults. The latest figures, released this week, showed that 22 people had died from nvCJD by the end of October.
Government policy on BSE and CJD is led by its Spongiform Encephalopathy Advisory Committee, a group of 12 scientific, medical and veterinary experts chaired by John Pattison, dean of the medical school at University College London.
SEAC's latest advice, which led to the bone ban, results from new experiments by Ministry of Agriculture scientists looking for signs that different parts of infected cattle could pass on BSE. Previously, it was thought only the brain, eye, spinal cord and small intestine could pass on the disease. The scientists fed large doses of BSE to experimental animals selected for their susceptibility to infection. They found clear evidence of infectiousness in nervous tissues called "dorsal root ganglia", which lie within the bones of the spinal column and would be left with the bones when meat is cut off the spine.
The scientists also found provisional evidence of infectiousness in the bone marrow of cattle in the very late stages of BSE, when they are staggering around with "mad cow" symptoms. SEAC says this result is still being evaluated "and requires further results before definite conclusions can be drawn".
At the same time, the scientists have been re-testing the muscle, meat and blood of infected cattle with sensitive new tests. All results have been negative so far.
Although no one knows what risk there is of developing nvCJD by eating contaminated beef, SEAC has attempted a risk assessment "using a series of pessimistic assumptions concerning the various factors involved in the transmission of BSE to humans". It estimated that there was a 95 per cent chance of no cases and a 5 per cent chance of one case of nvCJD arising from exposure to dorsal root ganglia in food during 1998.
The government's ban on selling beef on the bone from animals more than six months old aims to remove this risk.
04 Dec 97 - BSE: Powerful sense of dÈjý vu for EU partners
By Michael Smith in Brussels
Financial Times ... Thursday 4 December 1997
There was a powerful sense of dÈjý vu in Brussels yesterday as the European Commission and the UK's 14 European Union partners digested the latest developments on BSE from across the channel.
"It's just like last time," said one EU official, referring to March 1996 when the UK announced a probable link between BSE - mad cow disease - and its human equivalent Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. "First news leaks out and then the government makes a big set- piece to parliament. It is followed by wall-to-wall negative news coverage and consumer confidence takes a huge dive."
In reality, the effects of the announcement are on a different scale to those of 21 months ago. However, there could be fall-out not only for London's hopes of getting a ban on UK beef lifted but also for a potential trade dispute between the US and the EU over a Brussels ban on the use of specified cattle derivatives and for the sale by other countries of their non-UK beef.
The Commission will ask its veterinary experts to carry out an investigation of the UK committee's findings. The initial view among officials was that the UK's concerns about bone marrow were at odds with previous findings of EU veterinary experts who consider marrow to be low on the list of cattle parts most at risk of carrying BSE.
However, if EU scientists were to be persuaded of the UK arguments there would be pressure for a bone-in-meat ban throughout Europe. Although the UK has by far the highest incidence of BSE among European countries, the disease has now been detected in a majority of EU countries.
This week Luxembourg became the latest country to be affected, albeit with only one animal detected as suffering. Luxembourg joined Ireland, France, Portugal, Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany as well as the UK.
The EU has become increasingly cautious on BSE, usually adopting a safety-first policy. This has brought it into conflict with the US, which is trying to soften the effects of an EU ban due to take place from January 1 on sale of "specified risk materials", mainly the brain and spinal cord, of cattle.
Commission officials played down the possibility of the UK's ban encountering EU legal problems providing bone could be cut out at butchers and was not banned from coming into the UK from European trading partners.
None-the-less, yesterday's ban is likely to complicate efforts by the UK to persuade the EU to lift the ban on its beef.
Countries including Germany and Austria are already sceptical about a plan by the UK to lift the ban on exports from Northern Ireland where the incidence of BSE is rare. They want to see strong evidence that the UK has tightened controls to stop beef being exported illegally.
Some diplomats foresee even greater difficulties for the UK in steering through a proposal that it be allowed to export beef from cattle born after August 1996.
However, one argument put forward in Brussels was that the UK's cautious approach over bone-in-meat should re-inforce the argument that it is doing more than almost any other country to combat BSE.
04 Dec 97 - Picking over the bones
Comment
Financia Times ... Thursday 4 December 1997
The UK government's proposed ban on selling beef on the bone will ruin far more than the pleasure of meat lovers who can no longer enjoy roast ribs, oxtail stew and T-bone steaks.
It is a devastating blow for farmers reeling from a collapse in their incomes, caused partly by the strong pound and partly by loss of consumer confidence resulting from earlier episodes in the BSE saga.
Although only about 5 per cent of beef is currently sold on the bone, the whole meat market is likely to feel the impact of more adverse publicity. Sadly, this comes amid signs of a tentative revival in beef sales, if not in prices, and some hopes of an eventual end to the European Union trade ban.
Jack Cunningham, agriculture minister, had no political choice but to act on the advice of his scientific advisers. Given the disastrous legacy of inadequate action and excessive re-assurance by the previous government, he could not take time considering the matter.
The instant ban may come to be seen in hindsight as an over-reaction but at least it is clear cut. It might not have been necessary had confidence in official pronouncements not already been shattered by the previous government's incompetence. As it is, the alternative - simply advising consumers about the small risk of eating beef on the bone - would just have added to the confusion.
If there is a risk in the UK, where BSE is being eradicated, then the same precautions should be taken elsewhere in Europe where cattle are infected. In Britain, the latest disclosure will deepen the controversy surrounding the BSE saga. More questions will be asked about its origins and about the agonising way it has been allowed to unfold.
The demoralising fact is that more bad news is all but certain to ensue, if not from scientific research then about the human victims of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease who were almost certainly infected by eating BSE-contaminated beef in the 1980s. Twenty-two people have died from the new variant of CJD linked to BSE, and most scientists predict many more cases in the years ahead.
This makes it the more urgent for government, industry and consumers to be allowed to learn the lessons of the crisis. Yesterday's announcement was right, but it is not enough. Tony Blair, the prime minister, needs to announce without delay that the government will establish an independent inquiry into the BSE debacle, to report no later than the middle of next year. Without one, the chances of consumer confidence in beef being restored will dwindle by the week.
04 Dec 97 - Beef trade: EU gesture to US on 'mad cow' rules
By Neil Buckley in Brussels
Financial Times ... Thursday 4 December 1997
The European Union is attempting to head off a trade clash with the US with proposals to modify new rules designed to curb the spread of BSE or "mad cow" disease - only hours before the start of tomorrow's EU-US summit in Washington.
The US has warned that the rules - which ban parts of cattle most at risk of carrying "mad cow" disease, mainly the head and spinal cord, from use "for any purpose" within the EU - could block billions of dollars of US pharmaceuticals and cosmetics exports to Europe.
Most pharmaceuticals and cosmetics contain derivatives of tallow or gelatine, both produced by boiling animal carcases, usually including the banned cattle parts, called "specified risk materials" (SRMs) .
The US insists that, since it is free of "mad cow" disease, its slaughterhouses should not have to bear the extra cost of extracting SRMs from carcases.
Washington had threatened retaliatory action or a World Trade Organisation complaint unless the EU modified the rules before they came into force on January 1, 1998.
Proposals to postpone implementation of the new rules were thrown out earlier this week by Brussels officials, worried that this would be seen as backtracking on a highly sensitive consumer safety issue.
Instead, the European Commission yesterday proposed a piecemeal solution, involving temporary exemptions from the rules for certain products. Under the plan:
Pharmaceutical products approved for marketing after the start of 1998 would not be allowed to use SRMs in their manufacture.
Pharmaceuticals already approved would be allowed to continue to use SRMs until January 1, 1999, to allow industry time to adapt. Existing products and those manufactured during the transition period could continue to be sold until expiry of their shelf life.
Certain medicines which use SRMs, and to which there is no satisfactory alternative, would have a longer transition period, until the end of 1999.
Derivatives of tallow - used in a broad range of pharmaceuticals and cosmetics - would be approved for use even if they were manufactured using SRMs, provided they were heat-treated by one of three approved methods.
US officials were still studying the EU proposals yesterday. But they had indicated that US industry might accept the new rules, provided it was allowed sufficient time to adapt and find new sources of SRM-free ingredients.
04 Dec 97 - At last! A full scale inquiry into the beef ban shambles
by Patrick Hennessy Political Correspondent
Evening Standard ... Thursday 4 December 1997
A far-reaching and potentially damning inquiry into the whole crisis surrounding BSE and British beef is to be launched by the Government.
The investigation, expected to be headed by a senior judge, will summon key figures involved, including former farming and health ministers such as Douglas Hogg and Stephen Dorrell - and, possibly, former Prime Minister John Major.
But it will also look at the conduct of the current government and the latest ban, announced yesterday by Agriculture Minister Jack Cunningham, which has come under heavy fire.
Criticism of Dr Cunningham continued today amid anger and confusion over exactly when the ban would start and the way he rushed out a statement to MPs yesterday.
The minister's officials hoped the ban would be in place well before Christmas, while some consumer groups warned on-the-bone beef could still be on sale in the New Year.
Asked directly by the BBC when the ban would come in, Dr Cunningham said: "That is not decided."
Meanwhile, butchers in Smithfield Market and elsewhere defiantly continued to sell T-bone steaks and other "outlawed" cuts, while separate protests by farmers against imports of cheap Irish beef spread from their original flashpoint in Wales to ports on the South Coast of England and in Scotland.
Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern was so concerned by the action that he was expected to phoneTony Blair later today to discuss the matter.
Downing Street said a full investigation into the BSE crisis was needed, not least because of the more than 20 victims infected by CJD, believed to have originated from eating contaminated beef. "A lot of people died," Mr Blair's spokesman said. "There are families out there who lost people and want to know if that could have been avoided."
The inquiry, which could hold hearings in public, is likely to be officially announced next week.
Dr Cunningham briefed Cabinet colleagues on the latest twists to the row this morning. Support for his hasty decision to press forward with a ban came, however, from an unexpected source.
Tory Mr Hogg, whose handling of last year's beef crisis drew levels of flak almost unprecedented for a Cabinet minister, said: "Had we received advice of the kind that Jack Cunningham has received, we would have acted as he has done. "
04 Dec 97 - Beef on bone banned over CJD fears
by Philip Webster and Robin Young
Times ... Thursday 4 December 1997
The ban could affect products such as Bovril
Soups, stock cubes and jellies hit
The traditional roast rib of beef, T-bone steak and even Oxo gravy are set to disappear from British dining tables after the Government's surprise decision yesterday to ban the sale of beef on the bone because of a "very small" risk that it could cause Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease.
The move dealt a fresh blow to a farming industry that was slowly recovering from the "mad cow" disease crisis, and brought gloom to butchers, cooks and families looking forward to a Christmas joint. They accused the Government of a panic reaction.
Announcing the decision in the Commons, the Agriculture Minister Jack Cunningham, said that the ban was being imposed "on a strictly precautionary basis" after scientists advised that there was a very small chance that "mad cow" disease - or BSE - could be spread through bone or bone marrow . BSE has been linked to a new variant of the human disease CJD that has killed more than 20 people.
Dr Cunningham said: "This action will ensure that UK consumers continue to be given the highest protection possible against the risks from BSE." But industry leaders and some opposition MPs expressed anxiety that it could hit public confidence in beef and British hopes of getting the EU's export ban lifted.
The decision means that all beef from cattle over six months old - whether from British or overseas farms - will have to be taken off the bone before it is sold to the consumer. The bones can be taken out in shops, catering establishments or other commercial premises, but must not be used in the preparation of food, sold or even given away to people saying they want them for their dogs.
Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food officials aim to rush legislation through the Commons by the end of January. Retailers cannot be compelled to remove bone-in beef from their shelves before then, but the ministry said: "We hope that they may decide voluntarily not to stock the meat." By yesterday lunchtime, supermarkets had withdrawn bone-in joints from their cabinets and restaurants had taken T-bone steaks off their menus.
The effect of the ban will be not only to remove ribs, T-bone steaks, oxtails and possibly even oxtail soups from the shelves , but also to restrict products based on meat extract and beef bone stock - including Bovril and Oxo cubes. The ban could also extend to products containing beef gelatine, such as jellies and some confectionery . The makers of Oxo and Bovril, have always said that all the beef they use is 100 per cent safe and that it comes from BSE-free countries. Nevertheless, the ministry said: "If those products contain beef bones, British or imported, they will be affected."
Dr Cunningham made his announcement hours after receiving a report from the Government's Spongiform Encephalopathy Advisory Committee, which calculated that six animals this year and three next - out of 2.2 million cattle slaughtered each year - could be at risk of infection.
The committee had suggested that the Government had three options: release the information and let consumers decide; to ban the sale of beef on the bone from cattle aged over 24 months, or to impose a blanket ban.
After consulting the Chief Medical Officer, Sir Kenneth Calman, Dr Cunningham adopted the most draconian, feeling that to have allowed the sale of bone-in cuts from younger cattle would have been confusing. He told MPs that he had acted "because it would not be acceptable to allow tissues shown to transmit BSE to remain within the human food chain".
He knew the move would be a disappointment to beef producers, but said he was acting "firmly and rapidly to protect consumer confidence, which is in the fundamental interests of the beef industry".
Tony Blair had earlier hinted that beef farmers would be compensated when he told the Commons: "We will do everything we can to mitigate the problems they face."
The National Farmers' Union described the development as another body blow, but accepted that public health considerations had to be paramount. The president, Sir David Naish, said: "This ought to add to consumer confidence."
Michael Jack, the Shadow Agriculture Minister, also supported any moves to make British beef safer, although he said that Dr Cunningham's announcement "will be of very great concern to the quality butchering trade".
But the decision annoyed chefs who described it as a panic measure and a knee-jerk reaction. Michel Roux said: "The ban is quite pointless and ridiculous. It will destroy confidence in beef all over again. It is a real shame for food lovers everywhere." Raymond Blanc said: "This enrages me. Banning beef on the bone is like banning tomatoes from cooking. It will put a stop to tradition."
The food writer Digby Anderson was appalled at the imposition of a blanket ban without consultation: "They are perfectly entitled to issue us with a warning or recommendation but how dare they remove the choice? If people want beef on the bone or stock cubes then they should have them, it should be up to them."
Although less than 5 per cent of beef is sold on the bone, the proportion is much higher for sales from high quality butchers serving cooks who believe that meat cooked on the bone tastes best. The announcement comes just as they are preparing for their peak period and will disappoint many families planning to buy joints for Christmas.
Gordon Hepburn, chairman of the Guild of Q Butchers, said: "The timing of this is dreadful. We were just getting in ribs of beef and sirloins on the bone to have them nicely matured for Christmas. Now apparently they have put the nail in that.
"Ribs and sirloins on the bone are not usually big sellers, but for Christmas we usually have customers coming from all over - sometimes for whole sets of ribs and joints up to 16lbs. That is an important bit of business that will now be lost to us."
03 Dec 97 - Beef on the bone banned in new crisis
by Charles Reiss, Political Editor
Evening Standard ... Wednesday 3 December 1997
T-Bone steaks and joints are off as the Government acts on BSE scare
Britain's beef industry was plunged into a new crisis over BSE today as the Government imposed a sudden ban on all sales of beef on the bone .
The move follows new scientific evidence suggesting that BSE responsible for Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, the fatal human variant, could be spread through the bones.
The results from the latest series of tests reached Whitehall this morning and, although officials stressed the health risks were "remote", ministers instantly prepared to announce an end to sales. The decision will ban some of the most popular beef buys, including ribs, T-bone steaks, joints and oxtail.
It also threatens a massive new blow to public confidence in beef, slowly reviving after the BSE alarms of the last two years.
The supermarket giants were waiting until precise details of the move were spelt out by the Ministry of Agriculture, but made clear they would immediately comply with any new ban. A Sainsbury's spokeswoman said: "This has taken the the whole industry by surprise. "Obviously food safety is very much a priority for all our customers and we would go along with any Government direction in that regard."
T-bone steak was today taken off the menu at Beefeater restaurants ahead of the expected announcement that beef on the bone was to be banned. The move also threatens to wreck, yet again, the Government's efforts to ease the ban on beef exports to Europe. There was the added threat of a brand new wrangle with Brussels after EU officials warned that if the Government banned sales of imported - as opposed to British - beef, ministers might be prosecuted in the European Court. Farmers, already demonstrating over the slump in beef prices, bewailed the decision as a "bodyblow." The Liberal Democrat spokesman, MP Paul Tyler, said he feared the Government was guilty of a "kneejerk" reaction.
Agriculture Minister Jack Cunningham, stressed that the risk involved was "very, very, very small". However he said there could be absolutely no question of ignoring the scientific advice. All beef will now have to have all bone removed , by butchers, supermarkets or restaurants, before it reaches the customer.
Dr Cunningham said that cuts on the bone accounted for only some five per cent of beef sold. But the industry, shocked by a ban which threatens huge new damage, said that still amounted to 28,000 tons, worth up to £80 million .
The tests which led to today's ban were carried out by SEAC, the committee of scientists which advises the government on the problem of bovine spongiform encephalopathy.
The new strain of CJD believed to be caused by BSE has killed more than 20 people so far. The chairman of the Devon branch of the NFU, Ian Pettyfer said the announcement had come like a "bolt from the blue", just as farmers were looking to make good prices for their beef.
He predicted that retailers would now stop buying beef until they were able to get a clear gauge of public reaction to today's announcement.
Mr Pettyfer said he had no difficulty with any public safety concerns, but said: "It is the way it has been announced. You would expect the leaders of the farming industry to be told."
Welsh farmer Peter Rogers who took part in the blockade at Holyhead earlier this week - when 40 tonnes of beefburgers were tipped into the sea in a protest against cheap imports of Irish beef - described the announcement as "a kick in the teeth".
He said: 'I'm not proud of what happened when those Tesco burgers were thrown into the sea but you have to understand the position of the people who did it.
"We are an industry on our knees. We already have the strictest standards in Europe. We are on the verge of giving up and we can't go on without support. Farmers are livid with the Government because we don't have a voice. They won't listen to us.
"This is a further kick in the teeth and I honestly don't know how we will cope. We are farming with our hands tied behind our backs."
LEADER COMMENT
The Government's decision to ban the sale of British beef on the bone will deal a massive new body blow to public confidence , on an intensely sensitive issue. Even though only five per cent of all beef from our butchers is sold on the bone, this step could revive all the old public fears about BSE .
We simply hope, therefore, that ministers know what they are doing.
Until experts have had more time to study the scientific evidence, it would be premature to rush to judgment about today's decision.
However, if it was to turn out that the newly identified risks are remote, that this action only represented another triumph for the hated health police, then the Government would be justly castigated for inviting new panic.
All the evidence to date has suggested that statistically one has a greater chance of being killed by a falling roll of the Lord Chancellor's new wallpaper than of contacting CJD by eating British beef since current regulations were introduced.
We must assume that the new data judges the health risks to be much greater than hitherto thought, if the Government's drastic action is to be justified.
If this was not so, of course, ministers would be vulnerable to grave charges of irresponsible over-reaction. This decision will now be subject to intense scientific and public scrutiny.
03 Dec 97 - CJD victims will remain on donor list
By David Fletcher, Health Correspondent
Telegraph ... Wednesday 3 December 1997
People who develop CJD or other transmissible diseases such as Aids are to remain on the national transplant register - a list of 4.6 million donors who have agreed that their organs can be used for transplants on their death.
The decision follows the disclosure that tissue from the eyes of a woman with the human form of mad cow disease were transplanted into three other people. The UK Transplant Authority confirmed yesterday that its three-year-old register takes no account of a donor's current state of health .
A spokesman said even if it found that someone on the register was suffering from a transmissible disease such as CJD their name would not be removed. It would be left to the doctor who certified death to decide whether the deceased person's organs were suitable to be used.
The spokesman said: "We could be forever putting people on and taking them off. It would be administratively too difficult to take account of changes in donors' health."
She insisted that a doctor would automatically rule out a patient for organ donation if they had suffered from CJD, Aids, hepatitis B or some forms of cancer.
Clare Tomkins, 24, of East Peckham, Kent, a sufferer from new variant CJD who is now in a coma, carried a donor card for several years, her father said yesterday. Roger Tomkins, 51, said: "If she had died between her 18th birthday and when she was diagnosed with CJD last year, she could have passed on her organs to someone ."
02 Dec 97 - CJD case prompts organ transplant review
By Richard Savill and Celia Hall
Telegraph ... Tuesday 2 December 1997
Transplant surgery throughout Britain is to be reviewed after parts of the eyes of a woman with CJD, the human form of mad cow disease, were given to three people. An urgent inquiry was launched yesterday as the Health Department demanded full details.
It also emerged that Britain's leading transplant doctors are already preparing new guidelines on standards and, as a result of the case, will be taking advice from specialists in Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease.
The two corneas and a sclera, the white part of the eye, from Marion Hamilton, 53, were given to two men and a woman in her 80s. Mrs Hamilton died from lung cancer at Strathcarron Hospice, near Stirling, last February.
A post mortem investigation was carried out and a source at Stirling Royal Infirmary, whose staff were present during the autopsy, said this had not discovered the CJD. Diagnosis and confirmation came in later tests carried out in Glasgow and the information had come through only in recent weeks.
It was not known why or at what stage the brain matter was sent for tests, or whether CJD was suspected at that time. The UK Transplant Support Service, which handles organ donation arrangements, said it would not have considered transplantation if it had known about the CJD.
Robert Johnson, president of the British Transplantation Society, which represents transplant specialists, said they were working on new national guidelines for transplation.
"Certainly we will be seeking expert advice on CJD," he said. "It is a difficult area with latent diseases which can take years to develop."
A major problem is that CJD is only fully diagnosed when brain samples can be studied after death. Full post mortem examinations are not routinely carried out on all potential donors, he said.
Sam Galbraith, health minister at the Scottish Office, which has launched the inquiry, said the case emphasised the need to tighten procedures for the screening of tissues used in transplants.
"It is important when we explore the cause of death that we consider what possible concurrent diseases, which are not all that obvious at the time, are there. We will try to tighten up these procedures."
Mr Galbraith sought to play down the chances of a patient developing CJD after a transplant. "The risk of developing CJD after transplant is one per cent," he said. "The risk of receiving a transplant from a donor suffering from the disease is infinitesimally small. But there is a hole in our defences we must close.
"We need to make sure in future that we explore more fully not just the primary cause of death but the probable hidden manifestations of all diseases."
Mr Galbraith said Mrs Hamilton was not suffering from the new variant of CJD which is believed to act more quickly and has been linked with eating meat from animals infected with BSE.
Last night, Stirling Royal Infirmary declined to comment, saying only that it was "co-operating with the Scottish Office in its inquiries". Sources said the hospital had "acted within current procedures and had done what is expected of them". The sources denied reports that the hospital may have bungled in not relaying the results of the post mortem.
"The post mortem merely confirmed that the lady in question died of lung cancer. There was no question of CJD being uncovered, diagnosed or confirmed through the post mortem.
"Other tests were carried out elsewhere. The confirmation of CJD has only come through in recent weeks."
One of Mrs Hamilton's three daughters, Jane, 33, said the family had been "shattered" by news of her mother's condition. "I cannot believe nobody told us she had this bug," she told the Sunday Mail in Glasgow.
She said her mother's mental and physical behaviour had become erratic. "She couldn't walk in a straight line and kept staggering to one side," she said. "Mum was always falling over."
02 Dec 97 - CJD test on eye donor six months after grafts
by Ian Murray, Medical Correspondent
Times ... Tuesday 2 December 1997
Tests confirming that a woman eye donor had suffered from Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease were carried out two weeks ago, more than six months after three patients were given corneal implants from her.
Marion Hamilton died of lung cancer in a Stirlingshire hospice in February and her eyes were used in operations performed in March and April. It was only last month that tests were ordered on tissue from her brain to find out if the reason she became unsteady on her feet shortly before she died was that she was suffering from CJD.
Sam Galbraith, the Scottish Health Minister, said a comprehensive review of the case would be announced later this week and would report shortly. As a Health Minister, surgeon and a transplant recipient, he was "only too aware of the concerns" being raised over the eye tissue transplants. He was satisfied that there had been no question of information regarding the patient's infection with CJD being withheld before the transplants took place.
"I am determined that we get the full facts of this case so that we can learn from it for the future," Mr Galbraith said. The inquiry will concentrate initially on why it took so long for tests to be made to discover why Mrs Hamilton had suddenly become senile and unsteady, even though she was only 53.
Her eyes were removed shortly after her death, in keeping with her own wishes, and within 48 hours had been sent to an eye bank run by the UK Transplant Support Service Authority at the Royal Eye Infirmary in Manchester. After the hospital carried out routine tests to make sure that the corneal material was not a carrier of hepatitis B/C or of HIV, they were cleared for use. Two patients, one from Wolverhampton and the other from Liverpool, received corneal grafts; the other, from Manchester, received a sclera - the white of the eye.
Andrew Tullo, consultant eye surgeon at the hospital, said last night: "The surgeons who carried out the transplant procedures have been informed as to the identity of the patients and we understand that the patients in question have now been informed."
He said that the hospital had followed all the transplant authority procedures for accepting corneal tissue for donation. "There is a list of conditions which, if apparent at death, would mean that the eyes would not be accepted for transplant. None of these conditions was reported to the hospital in this case."
He said it would be difficult to speculate on the chances of one of the patients contracting CJD as a result of the transplant. The only reported case of CJD developing from a corneal transplant occurred in America in 1974, 18 months after the operation.
Officials have emphasised that the variant of CJD diagnosed in Mrs Hamilton was the so-called "classic" strain, not the new variant that has been linked to BSE.
A helpline for patients who have had eye transplant operations using material from the bank at Manchester has been set up on 0161 276 8500.
01 Dec 97 - Health alert after eyes of CJD victim are transplanted
by Mark Henderson
Times ... Monday 1 December 1997
Health officials launched an urgent inquiry into transplant procedures yesterday after it emerged that three patients had received tissue from the eyes of a Scottish woman with Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease , the human form of "mad cow" disease. Screening guidelines may now be changed.
The corneas and sclera of Marion Hamilton, who died of lung cancer in February, were cleared for transplant despite a post-mortem examination which showed she had CJD . The results were not passed to the United Kingdom Transplant Support Service, which arranged for three patients - two men and a woman in her 80s - to receive Mrs Hamilton's eye tissue. It is not yet clear whether the results were available when the operations took place.
Stirling Royal Infirmary, which carried out the post-mortem examination, is to hold its own inquiry.
Organs and tissues for transplant are not routinely tested for CJD because the disease is so rare, though they are screened for other viruses and bacteria. Organs such as hearts and livers cannot be tested for the disease as they must be transplanted within six hours of death and the CJD test takes months. Corneas can be tested as they can be kept for two months before transplant. Experts believe CJD can be transmitted though transplants.
Sam Galbraith, the Scottish Office Health Minister, said his department would investigate how the Stirling incident took place and ways of improving checks on donated organs: "It is important when we explore the cause of death that we consider what possible concurrent diseases... are there. We will try and tighten up these procedures."
The Department of Health will consider a review of transplant procedures nationally when the inquiry has established what happened in Stirling.
Mrs Hamilton, 53, who had three daughters and was separated from her husband, had not had CJD diagnosed before her death. One of her daughters said she had been behaving erratically in the weeks before she died. She was said to have been staggering and falling over, and had become a "senile old lady" in her early 50s.
Mrs Hamilton was cared for at Strathcarron Hospice in Stirlingshire after inoperable lung cancer was diagnosed. Before her death she signed a donor registration form allowing for her eyes, which were not affected by the cancer, to be used for transplants. None of her other organs was donated.
A spokesman for the United Kingdom Transplant Support Service said it was satisfied that the Stirling incident was a one-off and welcomed the Scottish Office's swift move to investigate it. "We are sure the transplant was carried out in good faith, but there are always lessons to be learnt when there is such a serious mix-up."
More than 6,000 cornea transplants take place every year, and this was the first case of CJD contamination the service had seen, she said.
Stirling Royal Infirmary is part of the national transplant network, under which available organs and tissues are matched with patients by computer and sent to hospitals for immediate surgery.
01 Dec 97 - CJD case prompts organ transplant review
By Richard Savill and Celia Hall
Telegraph ... Monday 1 December 1997
Transplant surgery throughout Britain is to be reviewed after parts of the eyes of a woman with CJD, the human form of mad cow disease, were given to three people . An urgent inquiry was launched yesterday as the Health Department demanded full details.
It also emerged that Britain's leading transplant doctors are already preparing new guidelines on standards and, as a result of the case, will be taking advice from specialists in Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease.
The two corneas and a sclera, the white part of the eye, from Marion Hamilton, 53, were given to two men and a woman in her 80s. Mrs Hamilton died from lung cancer at Strathcarron Hospice, near Stirling, last February.
A post mortem investigation was carried out and a source at Stirling Royal Infirmary, whose staff were present during the autopsy, said this had not discovered the CJD. Diagnosis and confirmation came in later tests carried out in Glasgow and the information had come through only in recent weeks.
It was not known why or at what stage the brain matter was sent for tests, or whether CJD was suspected at that time . The UK Transplant Support Service, which handles organ donation arrangements, said it would not have considered transplantation if it had known about the CJD.
Robert Johnson, president of the British Transplantation Society, which represents transplant specialists, said they were working on new national guidelines for transplation.
"Certainly we will be seeking expert advice on CJD," he said. "It is a difficult area with latent diseases which can take years to develop."
A major problem is that CJD is only fully diagnosed when brain samples can be studied after death. Full post mortem examinations are not routinely carried out on all potential donors, he said.
Sam Galbraith, health minister at the Scottish Office, which has launched the inquiry, said the case emphasised the need to tighten procedures for the screening of tissues used in transplants.
"It is important when we explore the cause of death that we consider what possible concurrent diseases, which are not all that obvious at the time, are there. We will try to tighten up these procedures."
Mr Galbraith sought to play down the chances of a patient developing CJD after a transplant. "The risk of developing CJD after transplant is one per cent," he said. "The risk of receiving a transplant from a donor suffering from the disease is infinitesimally small. But there is a hole in our defences we must close.
"We need to make sure in future that we explore more fully not just the primary cause of death but the probable hidden manifestations of all diseases."
Mr Galbraith said Mrs Hamilton was not suffering from the new variant of CJD which is believed to act more quickly and has been linked with eating meat from animals infected with BSE.