HC Deb 14 December 1995 vol 268 cc827-8W
15. Mr. Ronnie Campbell

To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food when he last met representatives of the dairy industry to discuss BSE. [4143]

Mrs. Browning

The Minister last met representatives of the dairy industry to discuss BSE-related issues on 6 December.

Mrs. Jane Kennedy

To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what representations he has received concerning the number of cases of BSE in the United Kingdom.[4141]

Mr. Douglas Hogg

I refer the hon. Member to the reply that I gave to the hon. Member for Pendle (Mr. Prentice) this afternoon.

Mr. Cohen

To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food if he will make it his policy to ban from human food all specified offals from calves under the age of six months.[4849]

Mrs. Browning

The controls on the specified bovine offals are designed to ensure that all tissues that potentially harbour BSE infectivity are removed from cattle at slaughter and are destroyed. These tissues should not, therefore, enter the human or animal food chain. The current controls are based on scientific evidence and are endorsed by the Spongiform Encephalopathy Advisory Committee. The six-month cut-off was originally based on the distribution of scrapie agent in infected sheep. Experimental studies show that BSE infectivity cannot be detected in either the brain or spinal cord up to and including 18 months after cattle were fed a large dose of infected brain. Indeed, infectivity has been found in no tissue other than the small intestine in these experiments so far. The small intestine from cattle of any age is banned from entering the food chain. The six-month cut-off for brain and spinal cord therefore represents a very wide margin of safety in relation to the experimental results and there is no reason to revise them.

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