- Plans to repeal a ban on cattle over 30 months entering
the food chain have been condemned by the main support group for people
suffering from the human form of BSE.
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- The Food Standards Agency will decide on Thursday whether
to end the "over 30 month" (OTM) scheme, by which older cattle
are destroyed rather than used for beef. The measure, introduced in 1996,
costs £360m annually in administration and lost sales to British
farmers.
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- A report to the agency said that removing the restriction
would increase the risk to human health "only slightly". By its
most pessimistic estimates it would cause an extra one or two infections
of variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, which can be caused by BSE, in the
next five years. The report says it would be cheaper to introduce animal
testing for BSE, which would cost about £60m per year.
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- Although ending the OTM scheme would bring 155,000 tonnes
of beef to the market, farmers want to use it to displace foreign imports,
not to lower the price of beef.
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- The proposal was condemned by Frances Hall, secretary
of the Human BSE Foundation. "I think everybody in the foundation
would agree that they shouldn't relax the rules until they have totally
eradicated BSE," she said.
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- "If these suggestions mean an extra two cases -
that might sound fine, if it's somebody else's family, somebody else's
child. What if it's your own? But it all seems to come down to money."
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- http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/environment/story.jsp?story=422723
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