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- The Government is today attempting to dampen fears that
sheep, pigs and poultry might be passing on BSE to humans after new research
showed that it was theoretically possible.
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- The research raises the alarming possibility that other
species such as pigs may be carrying a "silent" infection, without
suffering any of the usual symptoms, and that the species barrier preventing
infection is not as strong as originally thought.
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- However, the Government insists that it is far too early
to say whether action needs to be taken, either to re-assess the safety
of pork and poultry meat or to bring in new public health measures.
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- Instead, it has asked its medical advisers to consider
the new findings at their next meeting on 29 September. A spokeswoman for
the Department of Health said: "This research has only been carried
out in laboratory mice. It is far too early to make any leaps of faith
over whether it has any impact over the safety of the food we are eating.
There is no evidence of that here."
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- She added: "This is just an interesting piece of
research about the way in which the disease works."
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- Professor John Collinge, leader of the St Mary's team
and a world authority on the disease, warned that it had important public
health implications. "This research raises the possibility, which
has never been mentioned before, that apparently healthy cattle could harbour,
but never show signs of, BSE," he said.
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- Professor Collinge, whose research was published in the
journal, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, also warned that
there was a risk the disease could be contracted through medical and surgical
procedures. People who ate meat and became infected might be free of symptoms
but spread the infection if they had an operation and the surgical instruments
were used on another patient.
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- Dr Evan Harris, Liberal Democrat health spokesman, said
today: "This research is important because it shows that the species
barrier is not as strong as we thought it was. The worry is that there
are other ways into the human food chain for the infection."
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- However, food expert Professor Hugh Pennington, of Aberdeen
University, said the experiments were "interesting, important, but
not worrying". "They are really quite complicated and difficult
experiments to interpret. It does not raise worries about public health.
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- "People have looked at poultry to see if they get
this kind of disease and there is absolutely no evidence that they do.
There is absolutely no evidence from poultry or pigs."
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- Variant CJD, which first emerged in 1996, is now known
to be BSE in a human guise. A total of 79 cases of variant CJD have been
recorded.
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