MLC defends its safe beef claim during crisis
MLC defends its safe beef claim during crisis
By Johann Tasker
OFFICIALS from the Meat and Livestock Commission have sought to justify their claims during the BSE crisis that beef was safe, despite knowing that a ban on products infected with the disease was not being properly policed.
Colin Maclean, MLC director general, told the BSE Inquiry on Wednesday that his assurances that beef was safe were based on available scientific evidence.
He said he had initially questioned the science behind the governments ban on specified bovine offal, but accepted that it was "of fundamental importance" in maintaining consumer confidence in beef.
Mr Maclean said beef was safe, even though he became aware in July 1994 that some abattoirs might not be properly complying with the SBO ban. "The scientific evidence indicated that even if the SBO ban was not absolute, the claim of safety was still correct in principle," he said in a statement.
He remained unconvinced the SBO ban was scientifically necessary until evidence released in early 1995 concluded that cattle could be more easily infected with BSE than had been previously thought.
The new information "produced a substantial change in my attitude to the assessment of risk from the… SBO controls not being properly enforced", Mr Maclean said.
He then stepped up his efforts to persuade the government to ensure that the meat industry was complying fully with the SBO ban. The MLC continued to tell consumers that beef was safe.
"The human health risk remained remote and the research work on the challenging of primates with BSE reassured us that this remained the case," Mr Maclean said.
Earlier in the week the BSE Inquiry was told that MAFF vets were "clowns" who failed to prevent SBOs being fed to cattle.
Offal was still being fed to cattle six years after it was banned under government regulations to control mad cow disease, said meat industry consultant Peter Carrigan.
Unscrupulous people within the industry were able to pass banned offal products into the animal feed chain because the rules were not properly policed, he told the inquiry.
"I am not clever enough to be able to assess the impact in financial terms, but I am a damned sight cleverer than some of the clowns whose total ineptitude brought this once-prosperous industry to its knees," he said.