Headline: WHO warns mad cow has spread worldwide
Wire Service: OTC (COMTEX Newswire)
Date: Sat, Dec 23, 2000
GENEVA, Switzerland, Dec. 23 (UPI) -- World Health
Organization medical experts said Friday the global agency is concerned the
mad cow disease and its fatal human variant Creutzfeldt-Jacob Disease has
spread worldwide through the movement of contaminated materials.
"We
have concerns that there was sufficient international trade in meat and bone
meal and cattle that there has actually been exposure worldwide
already,"Dr. Maura Ricketts, of the WHO's animal and food-related public
health risks unit, told reporters following an informal meeting of scientific
and policy experts from international agencies.
The WHO
estimates that between Nov. 1986 and Dec. 2000 about 180,000 animal cases of
BSE were confirmed in the United Kingdom and about 1,300 in other European
countries primarily France, Ireland, Portugal and Switzerland. Moreover,
Germany and Spain reported their first cases in November of this year.
Moreover,
since October 1986 to early December 2000, says the WHO, 87 cases of disease
have been reported in the UK, three in France and a single case in Ireland.
The fatal
human variant is strongly linked with the exposure to the BSE agent "most
plausibly due to dietary contamination by affected bovine central nervous
system tissue," says the WHO.
Ricketts
said the BSE epidemic appears to have been caused by the recycling of animal
carcasses in meat and bone animal feed.
"Meat
and bone meal remain a big problem and this is how BSE is being transferred
among cattle for the most part, " she said.
In cattle
the disease is found primarily in the brain, the eyes, the spinal cord and
parts of the digestive tract.
According
to another WHO expert, Dr. Francois Meslin, the United Kingdom between 1986
and 1996 spent about $7.5 billion to deal with the BSE outbreak which
devastated its livestock industry.
The WHO and
other related agencies tracking the fatal BSE, such as the U.N. Food and
Agriculture Organization and the World Animal Health Organization (OIE), said
there is reason for concern because, "We are certain there was
international movement of materials that could have contained
infectivity."
"We
have enough information that potentially contaminated materials were exported
outside the European Community," added Ricketts, who went on to say that
it is not possible to confirm which countries might be affected until the WHO
and the other agencies have had a chance to gather information in each country
individually.
The experts
pointed out the way food and cattle feed moves across borders is not very
transparent and needs to be studied as do slaughterhouses, and other
processing facilities such as mechanical meat packing.
Ricketts
stressed that some of the countries that received contaminated material do not
have the surveillance systems to detect disease in cattle populations nor in
human populations and "we feel they must find out for themselves and for
us."
Some of the
surveillance that needs to be in place to detect both the animal and human
strains of the disease is exceptionally expensive for poor developing
countries, the experts said.
Ricketts
said it would be clearly to no one's benefit if even a small number of cases
of BSE were present in a country that is developing trade in animal products
and which then re-exported the disease to countries that have done a good job
in controlling it.
Meslin
observed that the tests made today are useful for the surveillance of the BSE
disease but in terms of food safety they "might be giving consumers a
false security." He noted that in some animals there might be negative
blood tests but there might still be some infectious agents
Finally,
the experts said more scientific information and investigation is also
required to determine whether or not BSE has also infected other animals such
as sheep and, in particular, pigs.
The BSE
agent, notes the WHO, resists freezing, drying and heating at normal cooking
temperatures.
The agent
is very difficult to destroy, said Rickets, who noted that in experiments it
still had infectivity left after being exposed to temperatures of 600 degrees
Centigrade
The WHO
said it is scheduled to hold more specialists' meetings in January and will
hold a major conference in late May to review scientific developments and to
try and muster support for more countries to undertake risk assessment of
every related area of the animal and food chain.
Copyright 2000 by United Press International.
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