Slow reaction by vets `made BSE epidemic worse'

Claims that the BSE epidemic could have been cut by a third if vets had acted sooner to identify the disease will be examined by the public inquiry into the background of "mad cow disease", the Government said yesterday.

The history of the origins of bovine spongiform encephalopathy and steps taken to tackle it are to be investigated by the inquiry headed by Lord Justice Phillips beginning next week.

The pledge comes amid claims that the first cases of BSE were identified 14 months earlier than officially recorded.

One of the scientists advising ministers on BSE said earlier action could have had a "very, very significant effect" on the size of the epidemic, and the amount of infected meat entering the human food chain.

A new BBC series, Mad Cows and Englishmen, to be broadcast next Sunday, claims that a pathologist at the official Central Veterinary Laboratory first discovered "cow scrapie" in September 1985. The diagnosis was made on a Friesian cow from a farm near Midhurst, West Sussex, where the alarm was first raised at the end of 1984.

However, the disease was not officially identified by the Central Veterinary Laboratory until November 1986, as a result of a separate investigation into an outbreak on a farm near Ashford, Kent.

Ministers were informed about the new disease the following summer, and a ban on the use of animal protein in cattle feed, thought to be the cause of BSE, was introduced a year later in June 1988.

Professor Roy Anderson, a member of the Government's advisory body on BSE, said if the beef ban had been introduced earlier, up to a third of the 170,000 cases of BSE diagnoses so far could have been prevented.

He also said that less infected meat would have entered the human food chain.

He told BBC Breakfast News: "There are a lot of ifs and buts about this case and I should say from the beginning it is easy to be wise with hindsight. Given that there was a slight delay during the expediential growth phase of the epidemic, the phase in which it is growing very rapidly, early intervention can have a dramatic effect on the course and this particular period - '87, '88 - was a period when the epidemic was growing extremely rapidly.

"Therefore, intervention 12 or 14 months earlier, unfortunately, would have had a very, very significant effect if it had taken place."

But he said no one should be held responsible for the delay. "I do not think it is constructive to ascribe blame to individuals or people or, as it were, organisations."

It was important to look at the lessons that could be learnt from the BSE epidemic which showed that human societies were vulnerable today to new diseases," Professor Anderson said. "We have to be vigilant and react quickly."

It was impossible to predict the risk posed by the new strain of the human version of the illness, Creutzfeldt Jakob disease. "With only 23 cases at the moment the future is extremely uncertain and it will stay so for another three to five years."

A spokeswoman for the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food said: "These are all issues which Lord Justice Phillips' public inquiry into BSE will address. The Government is not in a position to pre-empt its outcomes."