IUBio

Bovine encephalopathy

Oliver Sparrow ohgs at chatham.demon.co.uk
Thu Apr 14 06:37:12 EST 1994


BST is much in the news in the aftermath of the German ban on beef imports
from the UK. I - and I suspect other readers - would welcome views on this
disorder. It has become an orthodoxy that BST is the consequence of an 
infectious agent which is somehow passed through the food chain, notably 
when ruminants eat food made from the bodies of animals which were themselves
infected with BSE.

I am aware of no systematic technique by which BSE can be deliberately 
transmitted from an infected animal to another. Cows so innoculated show
pathologies at the same rate as cows innoculated from controls. Strict
controls on the re-cycling of animal protein into foodstuffs have been in 
place for some years, yet the epidemic continues.



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