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BSE
test on sheep ends in fiasco
By Charles Clover, Environment Editor
(Filed: 19/10/2001)
SCIENTISTS trying to find out whether the national sheep
flock is infected with BSE have spent the past four years testing the
brains of cows instead of sheep.
The blunder means that all the test results will have to
be scrapped, leaving consumers no nearer knowing whether it is safe to
eat lamb.
Last month the Government announced
that the national flock would have to be slaughtered if sheep were
found to be infected.
At that time the interim results from the Institute of
Animal Health laboratory in Edinburgh appeared to show that the
"sheep" brains contained BSE.
But ministers and officials, who were said privately to
be in a state of extreme anxiety, still told the public that they could
carry on eating lamb.
The results were then sent to be checked by the
Laboratory of the Government Scientist, which discovered that cow
brains had been tested by mistake. They were "bovine not
ovine", it said.
The laboratory's conclusions were posted - most
unusually - on the website of the Department for Environment, Food and
Rural Affairs at 10.30pm on Wednesday.
No attempt was made to alert specialist correspondents
who would have understood their importance.
It was also too late for MPs to table questions for
Margaret Beckett, the head of the department, to answer in the Commons
yesterday.
The results, which would have been highly embarrassing
for the Government at any time, caused a storm because of the timing of
their release.
David Curry, the chairman of the Commons select
committee on environment, food and rural affairs, said it was "out
of order" for ministers not to present the results to the Commons.
The manner of the announcement reawoke suspicions aroused
by Jo Moore, Stephen Byers's adviser, that the Government
"buried" unfavourable news, he said.
"It shows a lack of understanding of the rawness of
the nerve endings in the countryside, given the reaction to BSE.
"You would have thought every nerve ending, every
hair on the back of their necks would have risen, whatever the result.
"Instead Defra are totally silent the next day and
you begin to wonder who is running the show.
"We have them presenting Lord Haskins's report on
the rural economy yesterday when here was an issue which could blow the
whole rural economy right apart."
A meeting of the Government's spongiform encephalopathy
advisory group (Seac), which was due to discuss the results today, has
had to be cancelled.
Prof Peter Smith, chairman of Seac said: "We were
all completely amazed when the Government laboratory said it could not
find any trace of ovine material. It is a fairly disastrous error. It
is an amazing result that no one expected."
The study, which cost £217,000, was commissioned by the
now defunct Ministry of Agriculture in 1997.
A soup of homogenised brain, supposedly gathered from
2,867 sheep showing symptoms of scrapie, an illness very similar to
BSE, was sent to Edinburgh.
The institute said it had expressed concern that the
samples might have been contaminated with bovine material when they
were gathered for a different purpose in the early 1990s.
Prof Chris Bostock, director of the institute, said:
"I am flabbergasted, devastated."
He explained that the institute could not test DNA,
which would have shown whether the brains belonged to sheep or cows.
Both the institute and Defra have launched independent
studies into how the mistake occurred. These are likely to look at a
possibility of a labelling error in the freezers where the samples were
kept.
The one positive aspect of the affair is that the
national flock is safe for the foreseeable future.
John Thorley, the chief executive of the National Sheep
Association, said: "I am delighted that this is the outcome. There
is no evidence that there is one shred of BSE in sheep."
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