The mad cow controversy has
raised its ugly head once again. An
as yet unpublished study conducted by British government scientists says that hundreds of Britons
are likely to die every year from
Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (CJD),
the human equivalent of Bovine
Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE)
or the mad cow disease.
The most vulnerable are the
people who atealot of hamburgers
in the late'80s when the number of
cattle carrying BSEwasthe maximum. The gloomy predictions are
deduced by calculations based on
the 14 'new variant' cases of CJD
recorded so far in Britain. The
s:tudy suggests that the number of
CJD cases will rise gradually and
will be maximum in the year 2003
as the incubation period of the disease on an average is 15 years. The
number of such cases have doubled
in each of the past two years. "This
is not the doomsday scenario that
some have predicted," said James
Ironside, one of the authors of the
report, seeking to allay the fears.
Me~nwhile, the British government has been named the biggest
culprit for mishandling the mad
cow crisis by an inquiry conducted
by the European Parliament.
The report also accuses the
European Union's veterinary
experts, European Commission
(EC) and the national governments
involved in the controversy for
mismanagement. The investigation
indicts EC officials for their
"attempt to minimise the problem". It says that the officials tried
to guard the beef industry by evading discussions on BSE.
But UK takes the biggest share
of criticism. The British government failed to implement a ban on
feeding meat and bone-meal to cattle untif June 1996, though it had
announced it in 1988. "There was a
real lack of control and mismanagement and UK officials have
admitted that things could have
been managed in an another way,"
said Reimer Boge, chairperson of
the BSE inquiry committee.
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