- Government scientists researching how Britain would cope
with a nuclear attack drew up secret plans to sell meat from animals injected
with radioactive substances in laboratory tests.
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- Officials at the Ministry of Agriculture wanted to distribute
to butchers the carcasses of sheep, pigs and cattle contaminated with nuclear
isotopes up to 100 times the level considered safe for humans. The blueprint,
placed before a secretive Ministry of Agriculture committee on the potential
effects of a third world war, proposed circumventing nor-mal meat inspections
to avoid "considerable public and political feeling".
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- Documents released at the National Archives in Kew, south-west
London, show scientists in 1955 wanted to find the level of radioactivity
needed to make livestock unfit for consumption. The Department of Agricultural
Science at the University of Nottingham proposed to inject animals in a
research farm with radioactive isotopes of iodine, potassium and sodium.
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- Dr Hamish Robertson, the scientist in charge of the project,
wrote to the Joint Committee on Biological Problems of Nuclear Physics
to say the cost of the experiments would be "prohibitive" unless
the subjects, in particular lambs, were sold on the retail market. The
Ministry of Agriculture decided the animals would still be safe to eat
as long as the dose of radiation was no more than 100 times that for a
person working in an "official facility" such as a nuclear power
station.
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- Officials calculated that once a period of time had elapsed
the only part of the animal that should not be eaten was the thyroid gland,
where the highest concentrations of radioactive substances would collect.
A report presented to the ministry committee in February 1955 stated: "On
the assumption that the thyroid is not normally eaten, and in view of the
small fraction of the animal which would be consumed by a single human
being and the possible intervening decay of the radioactivity, no hazard
could be constituted."
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- The scientists, who proposed to use substances with a
low half-life (the system used to measure the decline of radioactivity),
were none the less aware of the outcry their plans might cause.
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- The documents, originally due for release in 1972 but
held back by officials, said: "Considerable public and political feeling
about the possible effects of radioactivity means that the ministry must
be careful to avoid the appearance of countenancing the consumption of
radioactive meat."
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- Minutes of a meeting added that officials could not rely
on meat inspectors to clear the carcasses without full scientific proof
that they did not pose a risk to public health. Instead, they drew up proposals
for the ministry to run its own safety tests. The report said: "The
Ministry will then endeavour to devise satisfactory arrangements for monitoring
the animals from Dr Robertson's experiments before these are passed for
human consumption."
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- The documents did not state whether the scheme was put
into action. The University of Nottingham and the Department for Environment,
Food and Rural Affairs had no immediate record yesterday of what happened
to the livestock in any experiment.
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- © 2003 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd
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- http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/story.jsp?story=437515
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