PA (PA News) / Sun, May 7, 2000 / By Nick Mead, PA News
The BSE epidemic may last longer than previously thought because of a "real risk" that the disease was spread by cow pats from infected cattle, a leading scientist said today.
BSE expert Dr Alan Dickenson told Radio Four's Farming Today programme that his research suggested cattle continued to catch BSE long after the date the Government believed was possible.
The new findings sparked fears that Britain was risking another trade war with France and Germany over the spread of the disease.
Microbiologist Dr Stephen Dealler told the programme that unless urgent action was taken to curb the spread of the disease, the French and Germans would impose new restrictions on British beef.
The Government has insisted that the last cattle were infected in August 1996, either through contaminated feed or, in a small number of cases, from mother to calf.
But Dr Dickenson, the founding director of the Neuropathogenisis Unit in Edinburgh which researches BSE, warned that animals born after August 1996 may have caught the disease a "third way", through infected soil.
His research shows that cow pats excreted on to grazing land by cattle at the height of the epidemic posed a "real risk" of infection.
If cattle born after August 1996 caught BSE through infected soil, the epidemic would last longer than the Government predicted.
The disease's five-year incubation period means it will not be possible to tell whether Dr Dickenson is right until 2001.
Dr Dealler said he feared France and Germany would extend their bans on the import of British beef unless the Government takes action to stop the spread of the disease.
He added that the future spread of BSE could be "drastically reduced" if cattle and sheep were injected with the drug pentosan polysulphate.
The compound, used in the United States to treat cystitis, has been shown to drastically reduce BSE infectivity in laboratory mice, Dr Dealler said.
Copyright 2000 PA News.
(posted without permission)
