§ Mr. Martyn JonesTo ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what provision is made for the monitoring and enforcement of regulation 14 of the Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy Order 1996; and if he will make a statement. [12779]
§ Mrs. BrowningRegulation 14 of the 1996 order is intended to restrict the possibility of cross contamination between mammalian meat and bone meal—MBM—and other products. To ensure no such contamination is occurring the state veterinary service has in place a surveillance programme covering farms, feed mills and any site where feed, or ingredients for feed, are produced or stored. Results of this survey are reported in "BSE Enforcement Bulletin", copies of which are in the Library of the House. Whenever a possible breach of the controls on MBM comes to light the SVS will investigate to identify the cause and, if necessary, liaise with the appropriate local authority who have responsibility for enforcement action. To help those needing to clean premises, vehicles or equipment that has been in contact with MBM a set of guidance notes has been produced and circulated widely.
Mr. Alan W. WilliamsTo ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what are the possible mechanisms for cow to calf transmission of BSE; and what assessment he has made of the most likely route. [12776]
§ Mrs. BrowningWhether or not maternal transmission occurs is still open to question. The final results of the cohort study, for which preliminary results were published in August 1996, will shortly be presented to the Spongiform Encephalopathy Advisory Committee. It is clear, however, that if maternal transmission does occur it does so only infrequently.
To try to establish which tissues might be involved in maternal transmission, blood, constituent parts of placenta, embryos, uterine washings and milk were inoculated into mice. In separate experiments, milk was also fed to mice. None proved to be infectious. In another experiment, calves were fed the homogenised placentae of infected cows as this was considered, by extrapolation from known evidence for sheep scrapie, to be the most likely route of transmission. The exposed calves survived without developing clinical BSE for seven years, and have recently been killed so that their tissues can be examined for the presence of infectivity. Finally, another large experiment is assessing the role of the embryo itself in transmitting disease. Embryos collected from infected, and clinically affected, cows were implanted into surrogate dams imported from New Zealand, and the surviving calves and their surrogate dames remain under observation in order to determine whether they succumb 281W to BSE. That experiment will not end, however, until 2001, when the youngest calf reaches seven years of age.
In the circumstances, the most likely routes of transmission from cow to calf have already been examined. Should it prove necessary, however, following interpretation of the cohort study, some or all of these options will be revisited as advised by SEAC.
§ Mr. JonesTo ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food if he will publish the evidence he has evaluated on whether BSE-infected meat is currently present within the human food chain. [12159]
§ Mrs. BrowningThe Government are committed to ensuring that no BSE-infected meat can enter any food chain.
All BSE suspects are slaughtered on farm and the entire carcase disposed of by incineration. The number of suspect cases is published in the BSE progress report, which is compiled in May and November of each year. Copies of this report are lodged in the Libraries of both Houses.
In addition to the controls on BSE suspects, all those tissues which are known to, or might, harbour detectable BSE infectivity in infected animals—so-called specified bovine materials—must be removed from all cattle at slaughter and disposed of under tight controls.
The Meat Hygiene Service rigorously enforces the SBM controls in slaughterhouses. Substantial additional resources have been made available to it to enable it to achieve our objective of full compliance with the controls.
The State Veterinary Service also carries out regular unannounced surveillance visits to all plants handling SBM. This surveillance is now showing a consistently high level of compliance with the controls. The results are published monthly in the "BSE Enforcement Bulletin." Copies of the bulletin are placed in the Libraries of both Houses.
Mr. Alan W. WilliamsTo ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food how many confirmed cases of BSE there have been in each country in the European Community; and what assessment he has made of the likely country of origin of BSE. [12775]
§ Mrs. BrowningAs at 21 January 1997, the following cases of BSE had been reported in the European Community:
- Republic of Ireland: 188
- France: 28
- Portugal: 61
- Germany: 5
- Denmark: 1
- Italy: 2
A proportion of the BSE cases in Ireland, France and Portugal have been reported in home-bred animals. All reported cases in other countries have occurred in animals which were born in the UK. Investigations are still in progress with respect to the fifth German case, which has been reported as born in Germany as the offspring of a cow imported from Great Britain.
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Mr. WilliamsTo ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food if he will make a statement on progress towards developing a test for BSE in live animals. [12770]
§ Mrs. BrowningMAFF has put considerable resources into the development of a test to detect BSE in the live animal, but so far no test suitable for use in the field has been developed. At present, BSE can only be suspected in the live animal on the basis of observations of the clinical signs exhibited; confirmation of the clinical opinion is dependent on laboratory examination of brain tissue after death. The development of a live test is particularly difficult with the transmissible spongiform encephalopathies because the specific infectious agent has not been isolated and there is no detectable immune response—normally two prerequisites for developing diagnostic tests. Additional resources are being invested into the development of a BSE diagnostic test and to stimulate research in this area MAFF recently launched an open competition for independent scientists to develop other novel approaches. MAFF is also working in collaboration with French, Dutch and American researchers in the development of tests. Although lines of investigation using urine, blood and cerebrospinal fluid show some promise on clinically affected animals, they are unlikely to be of value in diagnosing sub-clinically infected cattle.
Mr. WilliamsTo ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food if he will make a statement on experiments involving feeding BSE-infected material to cattle, on the sensitivity of cattle to this infected material and on the infectivity of different organs in a BSE-infected animal. [12774]
§ Mrs. BrowningCattle, experimentally challenged with BSE infected brain, at 300g, 100g, 10g and 1g have so far succumbed to BSE at the following attack rate:
Proportion of exposed cattle which have so far developed Challenge dose BSE 10/10 300g 7/10 100g 5/10 10g 2/10 1g The above results reflect the situation five years after exposure. The study is continuing.
Mice have also been inoculated with tissues from confirmed cases of BSE and from experimentally challenged cattle to identify those which contain the BSE agent. Some experiments are not yet complete, but so far: from confirmed field cases, the BSE agent has been detected only in brain, spinal cord and retina; a wide range of other tissues from clinically affected cattle has shown no detectable infectivity following this type of bioassay. These are listed in table 7 of the November BSE progress report, a copy of which has been placed in the Library of the House. In experimentally challenged cattle which were fed a large quantity—100g—of brain from clinically affected BSE cases, infectivity was detected in the distal ileum six months after challenge and was still detectable there, but nowhere else, after a further 12 months—that 283W is, up to 18 months after inoculation. The transmission studies in mice from cattle killed at later stages of incubation are still in progress.
Mice have also been challenged orally, but with a more restricted range of bovine tissues from confirmed cases of BSE. In these studies only brain tissue has proved infectious to the mice.
§ Mr. Gordon PrenticeTo ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what is the current incidence of BSE in rare breeds of cattle in the United Kingdom. [12856]
§ Mrs. BrowningAs at 1 January 1997, the number of BSE cases confirmed by breed in Great Britain is:
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Number Aberdeen Angus 129 Aberdeen Angus X 1,269 Ankole 2 Ayrshire 1,629 Ayrshire X 85 Bazadaise 1 Belgian Blue 81 Belgian Blue X 113 Belted Galloway 2 Black Hereford X 9 Black Limousin X 1 Blonde D'aquitaine 53 Blonde D'aquitaine X 94 Blue Grey 11 Blue Grey X 3 Blue Roan 3 British White 43 British White X 9 Brown Swiss 29 Brown Swiss X 36 Canadian Angus 1 Canadian Angus X 2 Canadian Guernsey 1 Charolais 415 Charolais X 585 Chianin X 2 Chianina X 2 Devon 32 Devon X 104 Dutch Holstein 1 Friesian 130,390 Friesian X 6,599 Galloway 7 Galloway X 20 Gelbvieh X 17 Gelbvieh 17 Gloucester 1 Gloucester X 1 Guernsey 1,560 Guernsey X 38 Hereford 574 Hereford X 8,127 Highland 16 Highland X 3 Holstein 2,334 Holstein X 411 Jersey 1,537 Jersey X 83 Limousin 420 Limousin X 2,206 Lincoln Red 9 Lincoln X 3 Longhorn 9 Luing X 4 Marchigiana 2 Meuse Rhine Issel 17
Number Meuse Rhine Issel X 16 Murray Grey 29 Murray Grey X 25 Normandy X 2 North Devon 14 North Devon X 34 Piedmontese 5 Piedmontese X 6 Red Friesian 282 Red Friesian X 3 Red Holstein 7 Red Holstein X 1 Red Poll 36 Red Poll X 3 Romagnola 2 Romagnola X 4 Saler 5 Saler X 3 Shorthorn 244 Shorthorn X 125 Simmental 453 Simmental X 1,912 South Devon 108 South Devon X 22 South Down 1 Sussex 47 Sussex X 94 Welsh Black 54 Welsh Black X 33 White Park 2 Sub-total 162,724 Not recorded 2,599 Total 165,323
§ Mr. Martyn JonesTo ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food if he will list those organisations which submitted comments on the proposed amendment to article 18(6) of the Specified Bovine Material Order and the proposed protocol for cleansing SBM rendering lines; and if he will make a statement. [13004]
§ Mrs. BrowningA public consultation paper proposing an amendment to Article 18(6) of the specified bovine material order and a cleansing protocol for SBM rendering lines was issued to 232 organisations and individuals on 5 December 1996. Responses were received from the following, copies of which have been placed in the Library of the House:
- Association of Metropolitan Authorities
- British Association of Feed Supplement and Additive Manufacturers Ltd.
- British Medical Association
- British Veterinary Association
- Consumers' Association
- Humane Slaughter Association
- Licensed Animal Slaughter and Salvage Association
- Meat and Livestock Commission
- Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons
- Shropshire County Council
- United Kingdom Renderers' Association
Mr. WilliamsTo ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what is his Department's latest estimate of the number of(a) residual cases of BSE in the British cattle herd and (b) cattle expected to develop BSE before it is finally eradicated. [12825]
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§ Mrs. BrowningI refer the hon. Gentleman to the paper published by Professor R. M. Anderson et al, a copy of which can be found at appendix 5 of the November 1996 BSE progress report which has been placed in the Library of the House. That paper predicts that, in the absence of a cull, 6,950 cases are yet to be diagnosed during the lifetime of the epidemic.