The World Health Organisation has warned that countries outside the EU, especially in central and eastern Europe and south-east Asia, are not doing enough to prevent another epidemic of BSE.
Maura Ricketts, author of a new WHO report on bovine spongiform encephalopathy, says she is not happy about the level of precautions in many countries that might have imported contaminated feed or cattle from the UK or other EU member states.
‘We know that, at minimum, contaminated meat and bone meal was distributed to a large number of countries – but not every country has surveillance procedures in place or has done a risk assessment’, Dr Ricketts said. ‘Countries that received that material may be incubating another BSE epidemic.’
The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation has estimated that more than 100 countries imported meat and bone meal from western Europe from 1986, when the first cases of BSE were identified in the UK.
