Mad Cow High Risk 'Junk' Meat Used In UK Baby Foods

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Mad Cow High Risk 'Junk' Meat Used In UK Baby Foods

 

 

 

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Mad Cow High Risk 'Junk' Meat Used In UK Baby Foods

By Jo Dillon

The Independent - London

8-12-1

 

Farmers facing fines for flouting virus measures Hundreds of tons of cheap

meat at risk of " mad cow " disease was used to make baby food during the

1980s when the BSE epidemic was at its height.

 

One manufacturer of baby food has admitted using large amounts of

mechanically recovered meat (MRM), stripped from cattle carcasses using

high-pressure water hoses, at a time when millions of animals were infected

with BSE.

 

The name of the baby food company has never been divulged, even though it

has been known to the food industry since 1997 when a confidential survey

took place of the meat-processing firms that used MRM during the 1980s.

 

But an industry trade body involved in the survey yesterday was unable to

make public the companies that have used low-grade beef in baby food, a day

after it promised to co-operate with an inquiry into the use of cheap meat

infected with BSE.

 

An investigation by The Independent has found that the British Meat

Manufacturers Association had secretly drawn up a list of its members who

used MRM during the 1980s.

 

The list includes at least one company that regularly included MRM in its

baby food products. However, the association was unable yesterday to name

this or any other company that included MRM in pies, burgers, sausages and

other products in the late 1980s and early 1990s. A spokesman for the

British Meat Manufacturers Association said last night: " The simple truth is

we can't find the data. We've turned the place upside down but the

information has been lost. "

 

Senior scientific advisers to the Government have repeatedly asked for this

information to help them assess how much BSE- infected material went into

the human food chain ñ particularly as baby food. The information is crucial

in predicting the future course of the epidemic of variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob

disease ñ BSE in humans ñ which has so far killed 97 people.

 

Although the British Meat Manufacturers Association said it will co-operate

with an investigation into the use of MRM by the Food Standards Agency, it

has not told the agency about the list. The FSA was not even aware of the

list's existence until told of it yesterday.

 

The list was drawn up as part of a 1997 investigation into the use of offal

by the Leatherhead Food Research Association, an independent industry body

which had been commissioned by the Government on behalf of scientists

sitting on its Spongiform Encephalopathy Advisory Committee (Seac). Bob

Hart, the scientist at Leatherhead who wrote the report, said the British

Meat Manufacturers Association collaborated by sending a questionnaire to 83

of its members. About 50 of them replied to the questions, which included

one about whether they used MRM.

 

The association coded the information so that Dr Hart did not know the names

of the companies. One unnamed food firm said that it had used " several

hundred tons " of MRM in baby food between 1986 and 1990.

 

Scientists within Seac are concerned about MRM because of the way it is

forcibly stripped from cattle bones, including the spinal cord ñ one of the

tissues known to be at highest risk of BSE.

 

Dr Hart said that, in the late 1980s, food companies in Britain were

producing about 5,000 tons of MRM a year. About two tons of this annual

production would have been pure spinal cord, based on an average

contamination level of 0.04 per cent. Dr Hart says in his report that the

estimates are conservative because they assume that spinal cord material was

removed from most cattle carcasses before they were stripped of MRM.

 

" However, there is likely to be considerable variation about this figure.

The worst case (where all of the vertebral columns contained intact spinal

column) would give 2.8 per cent contamination. In a 100g meat product,

containing 10 per cent of such beef, MRM would contain 0.28g of spinal

cord, " the report says.

 

Dr Hart found that production of MRM increased dramatically between the

first half and the last half of the 1980s.

 

" A confidential response from a producer of MRM quoted production figures of

1,456 tons in the former period and 5,049 tons in the latter, " says Dr

Hart's report.

 

The British Meat Manufacturers Association kept the raw data on which the

report is based without divulging the names of the companies who took part,

Dr Hart said. This is the information the association now says it has lost.

 

Two of Britain's leading baby food manufacturers said yesterday that they

have never used MRM containing spinal cord.

 

David Wells, for Heinz, said: " We have never used beef MRM in any of our

products. "

 

Dennis Segal, medical director of Cow & Gate, said: " We have never used meat

from the spinal column or any other specified risk materials in our

products. We have always maintained strict controls over the quality and

safety of the meat used in our products. "

 

A further statement from Cow & Gate says: " For a short period (1983-1988),

mechanical separation was used to obtain the meat for our jar foods, however

our suppliers were regularly audited to ensure that offal, or meat from the

spinal column, was specifically excluded from the process. This process is

no longer used for any of our products. "

 

However, it is clear from the Leatherhead report that tons of MRM, possibly

containing many thousands of doses of BSE, ended up in baby food.

 

The Food Standards Agency now intends to pursue the issue with the British

Meat Manufacturers Association. " We will expect the association to provide

us with this and any other data on MRM, " a spokesman for the FSA said.

 

Risk factors ï Mechanically recovered meat (MRM) is considered the most

likely risk factor in the transmission of BSE from cattle to humans because

it almost certainly contained high levels of infected spinal cord material.

 

ï After meat is trimmed from the carcasses, any remnants are blasted away

from the bone using high-pressure water hoses. The resulting slurry or

" paste " is used to bulk up cheaper products such as meat pies, sausages and

burgers.

 

ï It is estimated 10 per cent of the weight of some products would have

contained MRM. Britain was producing 5,000 tons per year at the end of the

1980s.

 

ï The Government banned the use of beef MRM in 1995 when it was realised

segments of spinal cord were still entering the food chain six years after

it was prohibited.

 

http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/this_britain/story.jsp?story=88185

 

 

 

 

 

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