§ Mr. Ron DaviesTo ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what research his Department was sponsoring prior to 1987 on transmissible encephalopathies in animals.
§ Mr. Donald ThompsonThe main centre for research on transmissible encephalopathies in animals has been the neuropathogenesis unit in Edinburgh, funded jointly by the Agricultural and Food Research Council and the Medical Research Council. My Department has been 299W maintaining a scrapie resistant flock of sheep for study at Redesdale experimental husbandry farm for many years and began an investigation of scrapies-associated fibrils in sheep in 1985–86. The central veterinary laboratory of MAFF studies new and emerging diseases continuously and identified bovine spongiform encephalopathy in cattle in November 1986 and has studied the pathology of cases ever since. The laboratory's main studies of bovine spongiform encephalopathy began in 1987.