Safe cow develops BSE


28 September 2001



‘Safe’ cow develops BSE

By FWi staff

THE Food Standards Agency is investigating how a six-year-old animal, born in a beef herd thought unlikely to have BSE, managed to contract the disease.

Defra has confirmed a single case of BSE on a farm in central Scotland which bought the animal from herd accredited to the Beef Assurance Scheme (BAS).

Animals from BAS herds are accepted as carrying less risk of BSE than other cattle, because they were not given the sort of feed thought to have caused the BSE epidemic.

For this reason, farmers are allowed to sell meat for human consumption from cattle up to 42 months old, rather than the normal 30 months.

The FSA said the animal had not entered the food chain, so it posed no threat to food safety.

But it added that it wanted to be sure that all controls were working and that people were being vigilant.

Dr George Paterson, director of FSA Scotland, said: “We have requested that all BAS herds comply fully with the requirements of the scheme.

“We want to be satisfied that controls are working, as well as get answers to what happened in this case.”

According to Defras records the cow was born in April 1995 into a herd that became part of the BAS in January 1997.

It was sold to a non-BAS herd in November 1998.

There are currently 66 BAS herds in Great Britain, of which seven are in Scotland.

The total number of BAS cattle is 4000, out of total UK herds of 5.3 million.

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