Source: United Kingdom – Executive Government & Departments
Scientists comment on an atypical case of BSE (Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy) detected on a farm in Essex.
Prof Neil Mabbott, Personal Chair in Immunopathology and Head of Immunology Division, The Roslin Institute & Royal (Dick) School of Veterinary Sciences, University of Edinburgh, said:
“Atypical BSE (bovine spongiform encephalopathy) is a rare disease of cattle. The disease is considered to occur sporadically and it is not acquired between cattle as an infection. Atypical BSE differs from the classical BSE which caused the outbreak in the UK cattle herd in the 1980s and 1990s. Classical BSE was considered by scientists to be spread amongst cattle through use of feed BSE-contaminated (meat and bone meal), and is estimated to have caused infection in up to half a million cattle during that period.
“Very occasionally, rare atypical cases of BSE are sporadically detected in cattle, but these are considered non-contagious and are not linked to an infectious origin. Four cases of atypical BSE have been detected in the UK in the past ten years. This current case was detected through the routine surveillance and testing brain tissues from fallen stock animals.
“The detection of this isolated case of atypical BSE shows that the UK’s surveillance programme is working well. There is no risk to the public, as the animal’s carcass will have been destroyed and no tissues will have entered the food chain.
“BSE is a devastating neurological disease in cattle affecting the brain, spinal cord and some other organs. Control measures remain in place to exclude these organs from the food chain to prevent the spread of BSE amongst cattle and to humans. A measure of their success, is that there have been no cases of variant CJD (linked to consumption of BSE infected food) in people born after these controls were put in place in the UK in the 1990s.”
Declared interests
Prof Neil Mabbott: “I have no conflicts of interest to declare”