§ The Countess of Marasked Her Majesty's Government:
How much funding has been allocated since 1989 to research into the hypothetical link between sheep scrapie, BSE and vCJD. [HL4701]
§ The Minister of State, Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (Baroness Hayman)The Department of Health has spent a total of £4.5 million on research into the links between BSE, scrapie and vCJD. MAFF has supported two projects on epidemiology of BSE and vCJD at a total cost of £2 million. These last two projects do not directly address the link between sheep scrapie, BSE and vCJD but study the size of the epidemics and model the possible routes of transmission. In addition, MAFF is currently negotiating a project to study the relative transmissibility of these diseases to animal models which simulate transmission between species. It was not possible to do this research earlier as suitable animal models did not exist.