Government scientists have shown that it is possible to infect cattle with a BSE-like disease through injecting scrapie-infected material from sheep. This may bring scientists closer to identifying the cause of the BSE epidemic in Britain.
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Scientists from the veterinary laboratories agency injected the scrapie-infected material into two cows eighteen months ago, and they have now developed symptoms regularly associated with BSE. The cows have been put down, and what is important now is for the scientists to determine whether the disease they contracted behaves similarly to BSE or scrapie, and whether there may have been consequences for human health if the cattle had entered the food chain.
Scrapie is an animal disease that has long been thought harmless in humans. The farming industry is now concerned that if scientists prove the cattle disease is caused by scrapie and harmful to humans, then the blow would prove disastrous for sheep farmers. It is extremely difficult to remove all parts of a sheep that might be infected with scrapie.
Scientists have cautioned that the results and significance of these experiments may not become official for another five years, a fact that worried officials from the Food Standards Agency, whose job it is to review food safety controls. In the meantime however, scientists have insisted on the possibility that the disease exhibited by the cattle may be the result of neither BSE nor scrapie.
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By GlobalData
