Inquest told that CJD victim loved her burgers

A woman aged 20 who died from the human form of BSE was a "devil for McDonald's" and ate Campbell's Meatballs more than anyone else in her family, an inquest was told yesterday.

A woman aged 20 who died from the human form of BSE was a "devil for McDonald's" and ate Campbell's Meatballs more than anyone else in her family, an inquest was told yesterday.

Kirsty Garven, a Marks & Spencer financial administration officer from Chester, died in July after showing symptoms of variant Creutzfelt-Jakob disease for a year.

Her mother, Jennifer Garven, told Crewe Coroner's Court that her eldest daughter had eaten a normal diet throughout her childhood and whatever the family ate at home. She added: "Kirsty was a devil for McDonald's. She would go out at night and have a burger."

The inquest, the first since the publication last month of the Phillips Report into the BSE crisis, also considered the deaths of Alison Thorpe, 25, from Macclesfield, Cheshire, and Thomas Gemmel, 17, of Northwich, Cheshire.

The Cheshire coroner, Nicholas Rheinberg, was told that Ms Thorpe began showing symptoms of vCJD in 1997 and became worse over the following year until her death at home in August 1998.

In the final case, the inquest was told that Mr Gemmelhad eaten "normal food", both meat and vegetables, throughout his life. When he first showed symptoms in May 1998, aged 15, doctors believed he simply had "growing pains".He died in February this year.

Mr Rheinberg said all three had died "unnatural deaths" caused by vCJD from contaminated beef in the food chain. He recorded a verdict of misadventure in each case.

* Experts from the National CJD Surveillance Unit told a public meeting last night in Queniborough, Leicestershire, that the meat supply chain was the most likely cause of five fatal cases of vCJD connected to the village. Reporting their interim findings, the experts said they had so far failed to link the cases to a single source.