Meat firms `flouted rules on BSE'

OFFALS WITH a high risk of carrying BSE could have passed into human food as recently as 1995 because slaughterhouses routinely ignored government regulations, according to a former senior government vet.

Andrew Fleetwood concluded that there was "widespread and flagrant infringement" by abattoirs of rules intended to prevent the use in food of "Specified Bovine Offals" (SBOs). The SBOs are cattle parts, such as the spine and various internal organs, that are most likely to carry the BSE prions that have been shown to lead to the fatal "new variant" Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (v-CJD).

New laws banning the use of SBOs for food came into force in November 1989, three years after the first official recognition of BSE. But in written evidence to the BSE Inquiry, where he is testifying today, Dr Fleetwood said he had seen a letter from a consultant to the meat industry in June 1995, which said that "unscrupulous abattoirs had cheated and would continue to cheat the SBO legislation and that SBO was little better than a joke in certain quarters of the industry". SBOs were meant to be removed from carcasses and stained blue to prevent them being used in food. But he became suspicious in July 1994 when he compared actual and expected amounts of SBO recorded by rendering companies. The difference implied that SBOs were being put unstained into food. Scientific analysis has shown that thousands of BSE-infected cows would have been slaughtered after 1989, and used for food.

Dr Fleetwood also said government veterinary inspectors failed to clamp down on the problem.