6th. November 2004.
The Editor,
Farmers` Guardian
Madam,
When
BSE descended on a stunned livestock farming industry it began with the
assumption that a Transferable Spongiform Encephalopathy (TSE) exclusive to
cattle, had by some magic means, made itself transferrable to humans in the form
of CJD or, later, nvCJD.
The first I knew of it was whilst working in the NHS where
some of my female staff became excited that their somewhat impoverished
scientist husbands had got contracts to investigate BSE - whatever that was. As
far as they were concerned it was work and it was money, although one of them
did say that the way to keep a contract going for some years was to greet
enquiries with the phrase: "we are really close to a result". As we
have seen, the phrase obviously worked.
I have no specific knowledge of TSE`s but Mother Nature seems
to have given each of a number of species a specific variety. Cattle, Sheep,
Goats, Mink, Cats etc. all have their own version. Humans, however, appear to
have three: CJD, nvCJD and the strange, Far Eastern version, Kuru. But beyond
trying to identify the cause of BSE, the scientists beavered away trying to
prove that a type-specific disease could transfer horizontally from one type to
another. What became apparent was that if you injected a known BSE-infected
substance into the living brain of another breed of animal under rigid
laboratory conditions, horizontal transfer and infection was possible. As a
famous scientist observed "under such conditions one could infect a
rhinocerous"
The BSE programme lingers on after the death of thousands of
animals via the OTM scheme which should have been cancelled but the department
of Health has now stuck its oar in. Meanwhile the National Scrapie Programme
barges on and will, upon its completion, have removed almost all typey-ness from
breeding sheep. By this I mean that the characteristics which identify and
separate specific breeds are not generally contained in the sheep with the
ARR/ARR genotypes which are permitted for breeding. This ill-thought-out
programme may well succeed in destroying many (all?) of the characteristics
which over the years have made British sheep unique and successful. We could
lose meat quality, hardiness and disease-resistance to name just
three.
So before any further damage is done to the already-hammered
British Livestock Industry, would it be sensible to take a long, hard look at
where all this is leading? Whilst we would use scientific and practical
knowledge of these issues, perhaps we could try to keep the matter in the hands
of those not directly manipulating the scientific studies. [The final
sentence was deleted for publishing which was:- As an old doctor once said
to me "you can make sperm go through the heel of a Wellington boot.....if they
pay you enough money]
Yours faithfully
Peter Greenhill
12 Parkside Avenue
Cockermouth, Cumbria