In article ,
Janet Baraclough wrote:
The message
from (Nick Maclaren) contains these words:
Would you like to discuss the rules imposed after the government
achieved an international first by creating a new disease (BSE)?
The Germans, perfectly reasonably, banned UK beef as an interim
procedure. The UK government's response was to retaliate against
the British public by imposing the following restrictions:
(snip)
No attempt was made to control the feeding of ruminant protein
to ruminants (which cased the trouble)or control the feedstock
industry.
??
The feeding of ruminant protein to ruminants was banned in 1988.
Ruminant offal was banned in pig and poultry feed in 1990.
All ruminant material was banned in all stock feeds from 1996.
All animal protein was banned in all feed to food-animals in 2001.
Don't bet on it.
You are correct that I mixed up several timelines there. Yes, that
imbecility was a lot earlier than the other ones, and was NOT a
response to the German restrictions.
There was an initial, half-hearted ban in 1988 - but it had a lot of
(effective) exemptions and didn't take full effect until several
years later. That was 4 years after BSE had been identified, with
its probably transmission route, and a good quarter century after
the danger of feeding ruminant protein to ruminants was.
I believe that is still true for the purported ban on animal protein
in animal feed, though the transmission route of BSE has probably
been broken. Whether another, similar disease could be propagated,
is less clear.
Regards,
Nick Maclaren.