§ 27. Mr. MacShaneTo ask the Secretary of State for Health what advice he has issued to national health service trusts about serving beef in hospitals. [31722]
§ Mr. HoramWhether to offer beef products on patient menus, as part of a varied and balanced diet, is a matter for national health service trusts to determine locally, responding to patient choice. The Spongiform Encephalopathy Advisory Committee considered the risks to human health from eating beef or beef products and concluded that any risk was likely to be extremely small. It also concluded that if human infection with the bovine spongiform encephalopathy agent occurs, which has not been proven, hospital patients were not likely to have increased susceptibility to infection.