Volume 1: Findings and Conclusions
13. What went right and what went wrong?
The identification of the disease and its cause

1148 Identification of the emergence of BSE was always going to pose a challenge:

• It had a long incubation period.
• It tended to strike down a single animal in a herd.
• It produced clinical signs which resembled those of other conditions.
• It could only be identified as a TSE by histopathology.

1149 It is to the credit of the system of passive veterinary surveillance and the skill of the Central Veterinary Laboratory (CVL) pathologists that the disease was identified at a relatively early stage of the epidemic.

1150 Great credit is due to Mr Wilesmith for his rapid identification of MBM in feed as the immediate source of infection. His individual contribution to the response to the challenge of BSE was of the highest value. His deduction as to the probable reasons why MBM was infectious was reasonable, but wrong. It was unfortunate that his explanation - the scrapie theory - was one that provided unwarranted reassurance that BSE was likely to behave like scrapie and would thus not be transmissible to humans.

1151 It was also unfortunate that, although problems with Mr Wilesmith's theories became increasingly apparent to the scientists as more was learned about BSE, no reappraisal ever received publicity. When our Inquiry began, most members of the public remained under the impression that BSE was scrapie in cattle and that the reason why cattle feed had become infectious was that renderers had altered their methods of production to the detriment of safety standards.