Some more confusing news for Europe’s meat-eaters
Despite safety precautions taken across the European Union, including Greece, the «mad cow» scare has not yet been brought under control. Politicians make decisions based on information from the scientific community. But bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), as scientists point out, is a completely new phenomenon about which little is known. A few days ago, the American scientist Dr Stanley B. Prusiner, who won a Nobel Prize in 1997 for discovering prions, a new genre of infectious agents that transmit diseases including BSE, announced that in experiments on mice, the prion had been found in muscular tissue and not solely in the nervous system as had been previously believed. If the same applies to larger mammals such as cattle and humans, the EU’s entire inspection system will come apart. The claim that there is no danger even if meat from an infected animal is eaten, since the infection agent is only in the brain and bones, will no longer apply. As to whether people should stop eating beef, Theodoros Sklaviadis, associate professor of pharmacology at Thessaloniki University, had this to say: «The tests we have at our disposal can trace the infectious agent when it is above a certain level of concentration. We examine cattle over two years old because it is only after that age that prions can be detected. This does not mean that they do not exist in younger animals,» he told Kathimerini. The prion is found in muscular tissue but in such small concentrations that they cannot be traced. «We believe that the smaller the quantity of infectious agent consumed, the lower the risk. «However, even small quantities can add up. The important thing is that we have learnt that prions have the ability to multiply in muscular tissue. But we still need to do a lot of work before we can say with any certainty which parts of the animal are completely safe,» added Sklaviadis. Deputy Agriculture Minister Fotis Hadzimichalis called for patience. «Every new piece of knowledge is useful as it allows us to inspect cattle while they are still alive and so we can be sure about the meat going on the market,» he said, warning that it was still too early to draw conclusions. However, it is beyond dispute we have eaten meat that even if not infected, comes from animals that have not been inspected even with the use of existing methods. Hadzimichalis confirmed a report in Kathimerini that beef had been imported from laboratories in Germany on the basis of non-existent inspections. «We seized some batches of frozen meat but others had already been released on the market,» said Hadzimichalis. He emphasized, nevertheless, that this did not mean the meat in question had been infected. Library wing
