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Scientist Says Mad Cow Tests
Do Not Guarantee Infection Status
By David Brough
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20010111/sc/madcow_tests_dc_1.html
1-11-01



``If you look at the numbers, it is impossible to avoid the conclusion that the number of vCJD cases is increasing exponentially,'' Aguzzi said. ``I am not optimistic.''
 
 
ROME (Reuters) - A leading Italian scientist has warned that tests of cattle for mad cow disease under new EU rules are not an infallible guarantee of the health of animals.
 
``Anything you test in terms of infectious disease has a window of false negatives,'' said Adriano Aguzzi, professor of pathology at the University of Zurich's Institute of Neuropathology.
 
``That applies to BSE (bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or mad cow disease),'' he told Reuters in a telephone interview.
 
``Even if many tests are negative, we cannot be sure that BSE has been defeated,'' said Aguzzi, widely considered one of the leading scientists in his field.
 
His remarks were supported by Professor Ralph Blanchfield, a food scientist at the London-based Institute for Food Science and Technology, who said, ``None of these (BSE) tests have been 100 percent validated.''
 
Under tough new EU rules to prevent the spread of mad cow disease, cattle aged over 30 months must be tested for BSE. Farmers in some countries have complained authorities have been slow to get testing started because of a lack of suitable equipment, creating beef supply bottlenecks.
 
The so-called prionics test used in Europe examines the brain of the dead animal for the presence of prions, the protein that causes the deadly brain-wasting disorder.
 
Many scientists believe the illness can be passed on to humans via infected beef.
 
More than 80 people have died of the human equivalent of mad cow disease, or new variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD), in Britain and two have died in France.
 
Bse Tests Negative
 
Italy's Health Ministry said this week that some 1,700 tests of cattle for mad cow disease had been carried out so far, and all were negative.
 
Two confirmed cases of BSE were detected in Italy in 1994, involving British cattle imported to Sicily. Both animals were destroyed.
 
Aguzzi said that the presence of the disease in cattle could only be detected late in the incubation period.
 
Researchers were now scrambling to improve the efficiency of tests.
 
Aguzzi said that the fallibility of BSE tests did not mean that beef was unsafe to eat.
 
``The best way to protect the consumer is to make sure that no brain or infectious tissues enter the food chain,'' he said.
 
Effective from October 1 last year, the European Commission adopted rules banning from the food chain cattle tissue at risk of carrying BSE.
 
The move outlaws the use of so-called Specified Risk Materials (SRMs), such as cattle's eyes, spinal cords and brain tissue, in food and animal feed.
 
Aguzzi said that the number of people likely to die from vCJD was likely to rise.
 
``If you look at the numbers, it is impossible to avoid the conclusion that the number of vCJD cases is increasing exponentially,'' Aguzzi said. ``I am not optimistic.''


 
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