- ``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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