[Mad Cow] Britons 'ate 5,000 tons a year of beef slurry'

greenspun.com : LUSENET : Current News - Homefront Preparations : One Thread

11 October 2002 01:56 BDST

By Graham Hiscott 11 October 2002

About 5,000 tons a year of mechanically-recovered meat, thought likely to be a significant cause of the human form of "mad cow disease", entered the food chain for 15 years until it was banned, an official report said yesterday. [Makes ya wonder if it's banned here, doesn't it? What goes into ground meat anyway? And things like burgers and tacos. . .]

The beef was obtained by using a high pressure machine to strip bones after the prime cuts had been removed.

Itwas mostly used in catering and economy brand foods such as burgers and frozen or dried mince, according to the study by the Food Standards Agency.

Until it was banned in 1995, some of the mechanically-recovered meat (MRM) came from vertebral columns, which may have contained traces of spinal cord.

It is thought the spinal cord could have contained high levels of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) infection.

The Spongiform Enceph-alopathy Advisory Committee (SEAC), an independent expert group advising the Government on BSE and variant CJD, commissioned the report to examine how BSE may have got into food in Britain.

Of the 5,000 tons a year of beef MRM thought to have entered the food chain between 1980 and 1995 it is estimated 40 per cent went into burgers and 40 per cent into frozen mince, some of which was used in hospitals and schools, the report said. It added that fast food outlets did not use MRM in their burgers.

Some baby foods may have contained MRM but information was "not conclusive", according to the agency.

The major baby food producers claimed not to have used MRM because of concern about bone fragments.

-- Anonymous, October 11, 2002


Moderation questions? read the FAQ