Information given by individuals to others as gossip

Because it is gossip it must not be considered to be the absolute truth until it is checked in some way. This must not be taken as an insult to anyone as none is intended. There are no evil people involved in the subject whatever and everyone has taken large amounts of time and effort in carrying out what they feel is the best

However, what seems the best for the farmer may not seem the best for the consumer and what is best for the politician to keep the populus calm may not be the whole of the information that the populus feels should have been given. (a lot of farmers are, however, very honest and I would not pretend that it applied to all).

Return to the index.
Go to the definitions page
Go to the gossip before July 1996, often still significant
Go to the gossip between July 1996 and November 1996, often still significant
Go to the gossip between June 1997 and October 1997
Go to the gossip between November 1997 and February 1998
Go to the gossip after February 1998
Dont forget to go to the news gossip sections

N.B. This section is in reverse order so that the most recent gossip is at the top of the page

April 1997

Indiana farmer dies of CJD.

This was jumped on by various groups as being BSE but no evidence has appeared.

MAFF admit that dogs got a TSE and that they suppressed the data.

Nobody can work out why they actually admitted this only 5 days before the election as it would not be good for the Tories. The reasons given by people in the MAFF are that by this time it was clear that the Tories were going to lose and that what they had to avoid was a judicial enquiry as soon as Labour got into office. The way to do that was to make sure that they were not sitting on any documents that they really should have published long ago.

MAFF aware of TSE in dogs in 1991

The reason why they did not tell anyone about it seems to have been the politics at the time. I am told that the information would have come out shortly before the general election and that was the reason of the suppression. The reason why it did not come out afterwards was similarly politica it that it would have meant that BSE might infect a different range of animals from scrapie...and hence that BSE was not the same (as claimed officially by MAFF at the time).

An 11 year old golden retriever in Norway affected by an encephalopathy.

This has just come out and was immediately said by MAFF to be due to some kind of non-transmissible disease. The recent epidemic of scrapie in Norway suggests that this may actually be associated with the BSE epidemic in the UK. The histology report is awaited....I have now had contact with Rasmus Lang-Ree, Animal Welfare Ombudsman on rasmus.lang-ree@nrf.no and he suggested that the verification of the diagnosis no longer relies on histology but on animal inoculation and PrP experiments. He also says that the source of the disease would be presumed to have come from pet food derived from the UK. It now seems that the Norwegian government has decided that the meat and bone meal or pet food exported from the UK was probably the cause.

This morning, 16 April,at about 6:15 am, on Bloomberg radio I heard a short announcement that an autopsy of a dead farmer had turned up what appeared to be the residue associated with BSE.

The announcement gave the location as somewhere in Indiana. Please excuse the sketchy info.

Rufforth bovine incinerator goes ahead.

York council has given it the OK for planning permission. The locals are not happy.

Imperial College to send someone to look at kuru.

The worry being that nv-CJD may be involved with kuru in some way. Information from the web site: www.sciences.demon.co.uk/WABSE.HTM. Brian Ford predicted this some time ago.

Richard Marsh has died in the USA.

This is a real sad story; the man was one of the few that had the nerve to stand up against the MAFF and the USDA. A hero.

Gadjusek is said to have plea bargaining and reduced his sentence to 1 year.

He is going in on the 29th of April.

The data concerning gamma globulin and blood transfusion.

This basically showing that 2 million people in the UK had been inoculated with gamma globulin since 1989 and that this was certainly to be partly from people that were incubating nv-CJD. The data came out at the Transplantation meeting at the Royal Society of Medicine on 15th of April. Dr. Dealler did not finish his talk and so the people listenting did not realise just what a risk was being taken.

It is said that factors VIII and IX from blood may be infected with nv-CJD.

This was gone over at the meeting in Geneva at WHO and they decided that the cryoprecipitate method of removing the factors would also concentrate the infective agent to some degreee. Yet again they do not seem to have made any decisions from this and they do not seem to have actually warned the haemophiliacs of the problems that have been taken.

WHO meeting.

In Geneva in March it was explained that the mouse was inoculated with CJD not nv-CJD to see if its plasma was infective (and it was). They also used the plasma late in the incuabtion period and said that this would have increased leading up to that point...so the media in the UK were misled!

The Dutch group in Chester showed that the farmers in Holland made a huge profit from BSE.

What actually happened is that the price of pork went up to such a degree that profits went through the roof. In fact they made 4 times the amount they lost on the BSE. Different farmers made the money but the figures were large. No attempt has been made to see if this was true in the UK.

The Swiss group in a very intensive study could not find any association between the use of meat and bone meal in calves and BSE.

They tried very hard and the control group was identical to the BSE group. It actually seemed a difficult study but they were expecting 100% of calves to have been exposed but what happened was that they found that 30% were never exposed to any potentially infective material at all! The worry is that the MBM theory may not be the whole of the story.

Paper showing that BSE may well be present in 2008.

This came out from Nick Short and Graham Medley. Not good news and a very well organised model of disease.

Now seems that FDA may have been involved in banning UK beef in 1987.

A reason being that they were actually going to ban 'any sheep that may be incubating scrapie' from human food in about 1978.

Marsh showed that rhesus monkeys could catch TME.

This was not shown by Brown by inoculation into a chimp. NB Marsh showed that the liver, kidney and spleen were also infective as a result. This came out as a warning not to take one researchers results as the only ones.

Soc Vet Epid and Prev Med meeting in Chester on 7.4.97 will not tell good news.

It seems that the data showing that 98% of cattle in the UK are from a herd that has had a case (be it asymptomatic) of BSE.

MBM leaking from storage sites.

It seems that the media have found storage sites with MBM from over thirty month cattle and they have shown them to leak MBM into the environment.

A school in Kent to have a debate.

It appears that a school mistress is leaving and has decided to organise a discussion on BSE. The major speakers now seem to be someone from the Government and Anne Maddocks, who is a very clever and tough cookie. Sparks may well fly as there is no way that Her Majesty's flunky could stand up to her logic. This should be in early May.

SEAC members used by Meat and Livestock Commission.

The recent report was by the Guardian that the MLC said in internal memos that MAFF could no longer be used as a credible source in order to advise people that beef was safe. The MLC therefore asked members of SEAC (Kimberlin and Bradley) to go to schools and tell them instead. The credibility of SEAC seems to have crumbled also in people who saw that report but few did. It seems that SEAC has got away with this one and no doubt the chairman will be telling everyone that if SEAC is to remain credible this will have to stop. The main problems are that SEAC's reports are private, they meet in private, and that the advice from SEAC in the past has been wrong; as a result their credibility is not in a good position. Also, certain members have been acting as the advisor to the pharmaceutical and food industries, telling them that it was not worth while looking into methods of treatment or getting ready for a CJD result from BSE.

March 1997

Paul Brown announcing that nv-CJD in mice is transmissible in the mouse plasma to another mouse.

The big problem with this is that human gamma globulins are made from plasma and actually in a way that might concentrate the prion. As such 300,000 inoculations per year up to 1995 and then 160,000 inoculations may well have taken place using gamma globs that are partly derived from infected blood. Horror is basically spreading through the blood transfusion service. I think that everyone can see that blood transfusion may not be a very clever thing in the UK and that people may actually start turning it down. The fact that Paul Brown is saying all this to the WHO will probably not do very much at the meeting but the transfusion people in Europe may consider stopping UK donors from giving blood in their country. The gamma globulins problem is unlikely to abate even though the DofH are as usual going to tell everyone that all is fine.

'SEAC' used to show schools that beef was safe in 1996.

Apparently the Meat and Livestock Commission actually named 'members of SEAC' as the people that they will get to show local authorities that there is no risk from beef. The information was leaked to many newspapers in March 1997. It has also become clear that Hogg knew that SEAC was being used for this and not as an independent group. Apparently, when asked about various BSE questions for the news, one SEAC member asked for money for answering questions!

Yet more changes in Edinburgh.

Martin Zeidler is now off to WHO in Switzerland and a new Gillian Stewart is taking his place.

A new set of statistics from Warwick

has now been produced basically showing just how reliable it is to estimate future cases of BSE. The report should be published in the Summer. What it also shows, however is that there are many other factors taking place also that can be drawn out from the stats...some of them not completely agreeing with MAFF's statements.

Collinge was quite open about his idea that nv-CJD came from BSE.

He made it clear that we should assume this until evidence appeared to disaggree (Warwick meeting). People still continue to pretend that nv-CJD is not proved to be derived from BSE and hence we need not take certain action. It is difficult to understand whether this is political now, with the election on the way.

Treatment a long way ahead.

Various reasearchers did not seem to know about any of the research done in the past concerning treatment for scrapie. In fact some of the top scientists did not seem to understand either why reasearch was inadequate currently or where we should be going. This was really quite worrying.

CJD relatives are quite determined to take Government to court.

Richard Bode the major lawyer that knows about the subject was at the meeting in Warwick and spent a lot of time taking to the various newspaper reporters and other groups to see where the land lies.

Research levels.

Collinge thought that quite enough money was available. Anne Maddocks thought that there was not any where near enough being done. Relatives did not seem to understand. What was actually happening was that Collinge had plenty of money and simply not enough time to carry out the research. He did not seem to understand that a lot of other people got almost nothing and that some of the most important research for microbiology (epidemiology of nv-CJD for instance) just was not being done.

Mites involved in the UK?

MAFF have admitted to considering research into the exposure of British sheep and cattle to mites and the replication of scrapie and BSE prions in mites (not funding it of course yet). What they have not admitted however to the MP that asked the question is that the work has been already started and that they have already found the mites in the BSE fields

Angela Browning has now released the data for the number of cases of BSE.

This is the data giving the age distribution of cases in different years and is what Kent used to demonstrate that things may not be just as MAFF would have us believe. Between 1993 and yesterday, however Kent simply couldn't get any more data as they wouldn't give him any....things may now change.

The MAFF have stated that CVL research budget is rising.

(8.8 million in 1989 to 10.7 million in 1995) Well that does not really tie in with the falling staff numbers and the low moral at CVL, does it?

Bring in the pharmaceutical industry?

It now seems the Medical Research Council is to meet the Association of British Pharmaceutical Industires to look into methods of treatment for nv-CJD (answer to parliamentary question 1842/1996/97) BUT what MRC dont realise is that it seems that a major document has been now produced independently showing the ABPI that it is not worth their while to look into this research. The documents says that, if DofH is correct in the low number of cases of nv-CJD then the companies wont bother. What they say, however, is that the DofH have much more grim predictions available with which to convince the companies to get in on it.

The opposition parties are determined to have an 'open government'.

This has come out in speeches in the House of Commons and they are also demanding judicial enquiries (which have the right to demand the attendance of witnesses and demand that they tell the truth). This is something that MAFF would HATE as it would mean a lot of covert data coming out and signs that they misled their ministers and Parliament. Apparently Labour are determined to do this if they get into office and I would expect MAFF to be instructing their staff in advance and starting to shred documents...but I might be wrong as many of the staff would like the air to be made clean as well by the bringing out of all the errors that were made.

The politics are starting to roll.

BSE is obviously an important factor for the election and various groups are determined that it does not sleep before the election. Hogg's claim to have lifted the beef ban is expected to be stopped by the EC, a number of quite awful pieces of information about the environmental risks of BSE are in politician's sleeves, etc. I recently visited the House of Commons and it was almost possible to feel in the air the tension of the election that is on its way. I was treated extremely well but all my gossip is on this web site so they did not learn much from me to throw at the other side.

New cases of CJD.

Two new cases (currently thought to be nv-CJD cases) came through the news media on 3.3.97 None seemed to be in the newspapers the next day.

The Kings Fund.

This has produced a report on the action of the UK Government over BSE. It is simply so damning that I can hardly describe it; almost as damning as the EU Parliament Committee report a few weeks ago.

More research..

It now seems that the EU will be funding more research into BSE than the UK and the meeting in Florence in April to 'sell beef' to Europe will seem to be a little odd when this sort of thing is going on. After all why do the research if there really is no risk? The media seem to have realised this and will be at the Florence meeting ready to sink the UK Government if they can.

The new article in the Lancet..

BSE - 10 years on. This seems again to contain the officialdom's viewpoint on BSE rather than the science of it and the data that is needed by a Lancet reader to realise risks that matter to the human population. They may not realise it but a number of much heavier articles are on their way, some of them pushing to one side the ideas of this article.

Milk and BSE .

Dont forget that the SEAC will present a report on 7th of March and the EU Standing Veterinary Committee will submit a report on 4/5 March on meeetings held on 17 Feb. Nothing has come through to me about these. If anyone has any further data I would be glad to hear it.

February 1997

Pathological changes in bovine muscle with BSE.

It was announced in the House of Commons yesterday by David Hinchliffe that changes were seen under the microscope but that the information was not permitted to be let out. Considering infectivity had been found in the TSEs muscle of mink, goats and hamsters, this would surely have been important at the time. Hinchliffe made it clear that he felt that the denying and ignoring of information was very bad.

Persistent pushing of information concerning incineration plants.

It seems as if everyone has realised that incinerating is simply not perfect for the destruction of the infective BSE agent. The media seems to have got it in their heads that some sinister news is going to come out.

The storing of cattle remains; not possible to get rid of them?

The storing costs currently 250,000 per week and is rising. The only place that can get rid of the material according to the EC regulations is ReChem in Southampton but that can only deal with 2000 tons per annum. Even if the 9 further places get the OK to deal with it, the rate at which new carcasses arise will be faster than all of these places can get rid of them. It seems as if this is a problem that is being stored until after the election was the viewpoint of a number of the MPs.

Asking for an open enquiry.

Hinchliffe asked for a judicial enquiry (i.e. outside the fingers of the Government) and it looks as if the other parts of the Labour party are going to be asking for a more open enquiry still.

It seems that various NPU and MRC members are in fact members of the Labour party.

It also seems that they are going to be filling in the Labour party about some of the factors that took place under the previous Government. It is not yet clear what advantage this is but it may be simply that the Labour Government are able to blame everything elsewhere and start with a clean slate.

It seems interesting that some of the cases of nv-CJD may not be being treated as ordinary dead bodies.

More information will arise about this no doubt. After tons of the disease has been put into land fills it seems odd that bodies may be thought of as a risk.

All is for the election.

The Labour party dont actually want to go around axing pieces off Mr Hogg because they are instantly blamed for bringing down the price of beef...then again they would like to do it repeatedly as it would make them seem tough. The Labour party have a problem but it looks as if, if they get in, they are going to open all the books, bring out all the data, lay it open to the press and blame everything on the Tories. This might take place through an open committee or through a freedom of information act but what ever happens they will make sure that they do not get tarred with the errors of Thatcher and Major's Governments. Labour are determined now to use BSE to nail the tories..but how without the information themselves?

Yes Meldrum has got his knighthood.

Well several people thought that the queen would send him to the tower rather than give him a knight hood.

More information appearing now about further media explosions.

It seems that one of the TV companies that is making its program at the moment may actually end up saying some very unhelpful things about the Conservative Government.

A lot more irritation has taken place concerning the prevention of research.

I now hear that specific people at Edinburgh and Compton are the major causes for much of the research not getting done...the reason the annoyance has got going so much is that these people should really have thrown in the towel.

It seems as if the farmers are losing for various reasons.

It is said that the rents are actually going up in dairy land and so the farmers are paying more in rent and getting less for their cattle. This is surely a political axe to grind for various Labour MPs

Powergen and National Power may well not incinerate the MBM.

It seems that they are demanding total indemnity if anything goes wrong from the Government and it also seems that the Government do not want to give that.

Huge cost of stacking away all the MBM and carcasses.

It now looks as if the carcasses are hung away getting ready to be incinerated (unlikely) buried (denied by the MAFF minister), or just left until after the election. 265,000 pounds per week is the cost of storage and nobody is letting out the information of exactly where it is taking place. Only 4% of the carcasses have been rendered yet. This is beginning to look as if they are storing it really for the next Government.

EC rendering demands are quite stiff.

This came out last June: 133C for at least 20 minues under 3 bars of pressure and batch processed not continuous processed. Now, in the UK the MAFF were determined that this would go ahead and paid the rendering industry 53 million pounds to do it. But other countries appear to be quite a way behind. Again the scientists are wondering if we will not see epidemics elsewhere simply because of the slow implementation of such regulations.

Republic of Ireland may be next.

The number of cases appearing in the RI seems to be rising steadily and it is possible with the same methods as were using in the UK to predict that this wil go on for some time. European groups seem to be encouraging the Russians to refuse Irish meat because of the BSE risk (as they are doing to some degree already) and this would give the EC an excuse to ban IR beef themselves. The RI Government is presumably very worried about all this as they are buying up 18,000 tons of MBM i.e. the entire stock of the country for destruction because evidence has appeared that feed was contaminated by MBM.

Disposal of cattle looking difficult.

315 pounds to render and then burn a tonne (?). 200 pounds to land fill. It now seems that they are going to land fill everything. Land fill approved last June (carcasses, burgers, over 30 month cattle). Rendered then land filled offal and SBM. 1.2 million cattle stored for later disposal (possibly an over estimate). All this seems very expensive. The scientists are wondering if the political group that wins in May might not realise what it is inheriting in terms of costs from BSE.

Douglas Hogg confidence vote.

This seems unlikely to win but Labour obviously have more up their sleeve. It is said that they will use it as an opportunity to bring more dirty washing into the public eye on BSE.

Treasury costs of BSE.

This seems to be now 3.3 million pounds but why it has just jumped from 2.3 billion is not clear. Perhaps it is because of the draft report of the EP committee on BSE that is to be discussed soon in the EP. This suggests that, because of the incompitence and deliberate misinformation that took place, the UK should give back the 1 billion that the EC had given or at least promised!

Vertical transmission rates corrected.

Anderson's group in Oxford, who appear to be getting much better at understanding the biology of the disease now have produced a document for the EC and MAFF calculating the risks of vertical transmission. 10 per cent VT seen in the experimental group (compared with the control group), 7.8 per cent are associated with a factor that makes them more likely to develop it, but the overall rate of transmission was <1 per cent. (i.e. less than 1% of cattle would develop BSE from vertical transmission and this would be a useful figure for calculating the fall in the number of cases of BSE by generation). BUT the data has not been published and worries are being seen from other groups that this 1 percent figure might be too inaccurate to be useful. The confidence intervals on it might be so wide as to make it unhelpful.

Spreading on the land

It appears that the Canterbury abattoir that was known to spread material from cattle on the land to get rid of it has now been given the go-ahead to act as an abattoir of potentially BSE cattle and have actually buried pits in the ground to bury material in. The SE television network showed what was happening there at the moment, with dead material and maggots on the ground. The opposition group were taking this up with glee for the press.

Organophosphate insecticides

It now seems that a group at Kings College have actually found that OPs do change the distribution of the PrP in the cells and the idea that OPs may actually have something to do with the epidemiology of BSE is coming back. Not published currently.

Labour seem to think that the Tories could have got the EC to allow UK beef into Europe.

The scienitific community seem to be holding up their hands in horror at this. Not only could the Tories not have managed to do it but if Labour win the election they they wont either. The scientists feel that the political parties do not seem to understand this disease very well and a group seem to be organising in a group to lobby Labour in advance of the election. It seems that if Labour win the first thing that they will have to do is to blame everything they find on the previous Government.

Pharmaceutical Industry becoming involved in BSE research.

All a bit hopeful, perhaps but it may be that they realise that potentially large amounts of money may be available both for research and as a result of products. After all, the drugs that would have to be produced would have to be taken by the patient for the rest of their life. It is said that the DofH actually told them to get their finger out...but nobody seems to corroborate this.

Increased research funding?

It is becoming more clear that much of the research budget for BSE in MAFF (e.g. the funding that goes mainly to CVL) is actually being cut. I am told that it is by 5% per annum as part of a national program of research cutting costs. What seems to have happened is that the BSE research funding is simply taken from the money that is left and in other words the BSE research is under intense pressure.

New CJD results for Jan. No cases of nv-CJD in Jan.

Although this is not significant when there are only 10 cases per annum the politics of the situation is said to be such that various groups may try to make use of the data

Various people asked to be the food safety advisor

. A few people think that they are on their way to the job e.g. people from the E. coli outbreak...but they do not seem to realise that Labour may not want the post to exist.

MAFF wants the chicken.

MAFF have contacted Narang and demanded the chicken that might have a TSE. It is not really clear how he can give it to them as it is probably in a bucket of formalin in a path lab out of his control now. The worry that has come from European groups is that Narang spoke too soon and should not have done so.

Europeans contact MAFF about chicken with 'TSE'.

Following the Mail on Sunday report of the chicken that might be infected various countries (incoluding Holland) have come back to MAFF with requests of information and suggeting that they may ban the UK poultry. MAFF think that they would not get away with this as it would be against EC rules but they Europeans think that they were duped the first time by MAFF and so why should they believe MAFF agian.

Italians ban Hib vaccine due to BSE.

They say that the vaccine against Haemophilus influenzae type b was made using bovine products that might be contaminated with BSE. The manufacturers do not agree, they say the bovine products came from coutries that have no BSE.

January 1997

German Government does not want to release details of the latest BSE.

Exactly the reason is not clear as it was bound to come out. Apparently it was 3 weeks before the information was released to the press.

European Parliament committee report on BSE stands firm.

It seems that the final edition of the report is likely to bejust as damning as the one that came out half way through January. A particular member of the committee that spoke to me was quite open about how annoyed they were about the position of the UK Government and felt that this should be made clear. (After talking to the EP people I can hardly describe to you just how poor the image of the MAFF is now in Europe. For a British institution that was once looked on as being excellent it now seems thoroughly tarnished and will have to start again from nothing - Ed).

Farmer is attacked.

The farmer in Germany that admitted he had a case of BSE recently was lambasted by his local peers who demanded that he must have fed it some meat and bone meal. He was determined that he did not and refused to take their taunts. This was all over the TV in Germany and cannot have been good advertising for any other farmer to let out the facts.

Human pharmaceuticals made from human blood products.

There does not seem to have been much discussion about the use of human products and nv-CJD being passed on. Recently one or two of the recipients seem to have realised that this may not be very clever as one in 200 of the blood donors may actually be incubating BSE at this time according the recent Nature article.

MAFF now asking for blood samples

They are being asked to send in to CVL the blood samples from animals that might have BSE...all very odd when they say there is no method of diagnosis. Presumably various groups think they might have one.

Offspring gets BSE in Germany.

It seems that the offspring of a cow exported from the UK has gone down with BSE. Now, this is the same pattern as was found in some cattle in Portugal and may well suggest that the mother was in fact infected.

Harash Narang has got 18months of funding.

The man that they were determined was wrong all the time has been funded with 89,000 to work in Leeds University....reviewers of his applications would simply have been the scientists that failed earlier so he is lucky.

Research funding.

UK funding is supposed to be going up by a further 17million in BSE/CJD research over the next 3 years. The depressing thing is that the money may be going to the research groups that have failed already and are involved in giving reviews of their mates research proposals. It is still well below the demands made by the Spongiform Encephalopathy Research Campaign but it is a large increase.

European Parliament report.

Initially it was claimed that the draft report put out by Manuel Medina Ortega (you may be able to find this elsewhere on the internet) was over aggressive and that the true report expected in February would not be so sinister. It is now said that this may not be true and that this is effectively the 'true' report aimed at making an effect and a later report may also be fairly damning of EC and UK Government action.

nv-CJD cases in hundreds.

Apparently this did not get published in the scientific journals at the time that the Indpendent published the headline claiming it (exactly why is not clear) but the scientists that denied the article existed at all were not totally clear...because it is coming out in Nature on 16.1.97.

Freedom of Information

Various groups appear to be annoyed with the freedom of information that has been put forward by the Government. MAFF has never been particularly good about giving out data (and still has refused to give statistical data on BSE to major researchers) and has fought the Campaign for Freedom of Information. Recently was report that MAFF want to charge Alan Watson (01792 851599), an engineer from the rendering industry, over a thousand pounds for giving out data on why the machinery did not work in stopping infections getting through and at least 5000 pounds for taking legal advice as to whether they were able to give the advice anyway. The CFI was extremely annoyed by this in that it meant it was a pretence that the information was available to the people that it mattered to.

Freedom of Information

It seems that there is to be a meeting of groups invlved in FOI and they are to produce a report on the way that the information was prevented from getting through to the people that needed it (e.g. the populus). E-mail enquiry: 100145.2634@compuserve.com If you want information to get to them in time for their meeting it should be there (p.o. Box 71 Rotherham S61, phone 01142 438117 or fax 618424) fairly quickly.

Meat and Livestock Commission.

It appears that the MLC spent a lot of time and money last year investigating why people didn't like the idea of eating beef. The findings were simply that people in middle life and younger ones were particlularly against the idea of eating it and that schools were banning beef in large numbers. What is particularly worrying is that specific people were being asked by MLC to go to schools and give lectures telling them that all was OK and that they should not worry. It now seems that these people were from official sources and should not have been associated with the MLC at all; they should have been independent. The MLC admits in their internal documents that MAFF has lost its credibility and that scientists are the only source that MLC can use to bring people back to eating beef. However, the finding that they were to use independent scientists that were supposed not to be on anyone's side in this has now appeared.

Meat and Livestock Commission.

The internal memo from the MLC indicates just how they were expecting to orchestrate action in manipulating the information that was being given to children about meat. Presumably MLC was only going to tell the truth but the document discusses the "preparation of consumer-friendly information based on MAFF's lengthy assurance documents to ensure that communications to the schools are professional, easy to read and very user-friendly". The document itself is very worrying to anyone that would normally accept information from apparently official sources; basically because it suggests that even official information can be manipulated by a biased group such as the MLC.

Organophosphate insecticides.

It now appears that OPs do alter the production of the prion protein inside infected cells. This data has not been fully released at the moment but no doubt will be soon. (The problem with the OP argument was always that there was an epidemic of BSE and yet no epidemic of OP usage. However one of the problems with meat and bone meal as the whole story for BSE was that we had exported quite large amounts and yet there was no epidemic on the continent. What would fit nicely with these is if specific OPs were needed AND an infectious agent...and that is what this finding might suggest - Ed)

Small predictions for nv-CJD.

It now appears that the case numbers really are going to get published from the Edinburgh group suggesting 'hundreds' rather than 'millions' of nv CJD cases. It will depend on the 15 year incubation period being the right figure and that is just a bit hopeful. What is said to be happening is that other calculations are being done by other groups that suggest that they are a long way out.

December 1996

Francois Cathala, the expert in CJD in France had her house broken into.

They took various things including Dr. Dealler's book on BSE. He has sent her a new copy.

The headline in the Independent that the case numbers of vCJD was going to be in hundreds was wrong.

It seems that the Edinburgh groups had indeed written a paper which was being sent to various journals but it simply did not say that. Ironside was fed up when he actually had to make a speech to the Royal Statistical Society the same day and there were the group that would simply have said that from 14 cases you could not predict anything accurately.

It now seems that the UK Government is going to be pushing its drug companies into taking part with the BSE research.

It seems that they have arranged to meet the top bods from the companies in about March of 1997. However a recent visit to Glaxo by a friend did not put forward any good sign of them taking an interest. The problem is simply that if you tell the population that everything is all right then the drug companies dont do anything about it, whereas if you tell the truth to the populus you might lose the election.

The Dept of Health organised strategy for research into TSEs.

This ran out of copies very quickly and eventually they sent out huge wads to people. Anyway, it says much the same as the SERC asked for in January 1996 and Weissman said to the EC in October. However, the fact that it is under the DofH means that something will get done.

The meeting in Washington in December looks as if it is going to be packed.

The blood transfusion factors may well not get a good enough viewpoint, however, and there will be a lot of agriculturalists turning up.

The meeting at the Royal Statistical Society was a bit disappointing to the media.

All the people that came to speak did not actually say how many people were going to die, which is what they were waiting for, of course. It now seems that all they could say was that the numbers could be anywhere from very few and an awful lot. The most impressive one was Sheilah Gore, who made it clear that you had to organise things well in advance with this sort of disease and sitting waiting was not the game to play. I was quite surprised at just how little went on in the audience and how the statisiticians did not pick up on some of the most off-putting models.

Europeans coming.

It seems that some memebrs of the European Parliament are coming to see what is actually taking place in the UK. No doubt the MAFF are aching for them to see the damage that EC regulations have done. However, it seems that the organisation of their visit has been almost entirely done by MAFF to show them exactly this and the talking to the consumers groups that was expected will be only a very small part of it...unless they get in quickly and book their place.

TV companies move in on blood transfusion.

It now seems that CBS are thinking of making something of this. All I have heard is that they are going to phone up the various people in the USA as to whether UK blood donations should be assumed to be a risk or not one. Apparently they are not the only ones but I dont know the others.

The European Parliament visitors to the UK independent?

The gossip goes around that that this is simply hopeful and that they were basically in the UK to dig up the dirt. At their final meal they were fed good old English beef (and ate it) but the report that is expected is not going to be polite about the MAFF, it is thought.

The E Commission looking to take power out of MAFF hands.

Franz Fischler seems to want to set up an independent agency in Brussels to deal with the safety of food. The horrors that were reported to go through the Tory party when that was announced! The idea was that the organisation would actually have power in the UK over which food was safe and which was not must have shocked them. BUT the idea is in fact pushing ahead and it is likely to get a lot of backing in the E Parliament.

Its all to do with subsidies.

The worry that is going around about the Eurodollar is mainly about the ability of the Government to set its own budget....however things are not so much as they seem as one problem is that the Eurodollar may well set the European compensation levels for sheep etc and so some countries may come out much better off than others....and the farmers are starting to grumble.

Findings turn out to show MAFF did not do as it said.

It seems that the European Parliament report due to come out in Jan/Feb next year will show that MAFF did not tell the EC what was really going on with BSE, did not explain how it was possible to calculate the number of infected cattle being exported, did not explain how it was possible to tell that there were going to be quite large numbers of cattle with BSE born after the feed ban, did not explain why their studies looking into the infectivity of tissue were not adequately sensitive to demonstrate safety to humans, and did not carry out many of the directions it had agreed with the EC that it would....but what the document will show most sinisterly is that the EC did not do anything to enforce its own plans, to check them, or to act in such a way as to prevent a catastrophe. It looks as if the report is going to be a horrific crusher of EC inaction....but inaction was what MAFF and the UK wanted and so much of the blame will go on their manipulation of information. This report comes from a contact in Brussels who seems to have a close idea.

The EP group looked over Lord Plumb's part of the country in the UK.

Lord Plumb, a Tory EP member (and there are not many of them) was there when Lacey put him down when asked questions at their meeting in Strasbourg (?). Lacey is extremely good at this and Plumb's plot in the UK will not look good, particularly to the Spanish member, no matter how hard Plumb tries.

The European Community decide not to ban sheep heads

It seems that the sheep and goat offal that were banned by the French from being in human food were as directed by the WHO and various other advisory groups. Also, the UK had banned the heads on the 15th September. The problem is that they may contain BSE and hence cause futher problems. It seems, however that the same problem may have arrived in further countries as well, and assuming that there will be no risk may be more than they are aware of.

BSE is not expected to pass through soil.

Another expert on the physical properties of hydrophobic compounds such as prions said to me that he also thought that prions would stay inthe soil for a long time today and that they would attatch themselves onto various plant derived elements that would accept them easily. Now, I have heard this from a few directions and so it must have surely reached MAFF.

Anderson was not given full access to MAFF's BSE data base.

Even though the House of Commons Select Committee, the Government's own directives, the official position of MAFF (and everyone else!) said that the data base must be open to scientific researchers, even Anderson has not been given access. The exact reason for this is not clear but it is thought that there is a lot of very unwanted and politically unfavourable data on it. For instance there is plenty of data with which the calculate the underreporting rates for BSE in various parts of the country or on neighbouring farms. Anderson offered to do a search to find out what happened to the offspring of cattle with BSE. Did they go down with BSE themselves? Anderson was not permitted to do this study. We should not forget that Dealler and Kent have also been denied access simply by the MAFF not answering letters sent to them.

Fish meal?

The European Parliament's group were told that there may actually be a risk from rish meal that might contain MBM from cattle. This came as a speculation from a scientist but, the EP would of course accept this as being a reasonable thought on the subject.. Anderson was obviously not happy with fish meal.

Anderson admitted that underreporting appeared to take place for BSE

In his reply to the European Parliament Committee: " We certainly detect significant underreporting prior to 1988 and certainly a degreee of underreporting running through 1989-1990 and probably 1991. Our estimate of the fraction in very recent times is a few percent as opposed to 10 or 30. " It is said that he is using the wrong technique to find it out but this is a very difficult task and the result is not that helpful in the UK apart from extending the apparent end to the epidemic in the UK. He felt that underreporting in Europe is probably much greater.

Return to the index.

---

e-mail to

Steve Dealler at deal@airtime.co.uk

It is important that we know who wants information about BSE and what you think about what is here. If you would like regular information mailed to you on the mailing list or the internet journal please tell us.