Volume 2: Science
3. The nature and cause of BSE
BSE incidence in Europe

3.225 The first cases to be reported in countries outside the UK were in the Republic of Ireland in 1989, ¹ followed by Switzerland and Portugal in 1990 ² and France in 1991. As at 31 January 2000, these countries have seen 481, 353, 371 and 100 cases respectively. It is likely that these cases were due to a combination of importing infected MBM or protein concentrates containing MBM, and importing infected cattle that were then recycled.

3.226 The legal situation regarding exports of MBM is covered in vol. 10: International Trade. The interpretation of MBM export data is difficult since statistics are not available for MBM separately from other animal feed. Some export data included the re-export of imported material, therefore making it impossible to identify the proportion of UK-manufactured material exported.

3.227 Native cases have also been recorded in Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg. However, most attention has been focused on Portugal where the number of cases has continued to rise, reaching 371 by 31 January 2000. It is presumed that the epidemic here was triggered by the import of infected cattle from the UK, and the subsequent recycling of these animals in cattle feed. Recent back-calculations on the Portuguese figures, carried out by Dr Donnelly and colleagues at the Wellcome Centre for the Epidemiology of Infectious Diseases in Oxford, have estimated that the epidemic will have reached its peak in 1999 and will decline thereafter. This assumes that there has been no infection in animals born since June 1995, as the ban on the use of ruminant protein in cattle feed was only introduced in Portugal in January 1995. ³

3.228 The epidemics in mainland Europe have remained on a much smaller scale than that in the UK, because of the timing of their respective feed bans. However, it is presumed that in these countries under-reporting will have been a significant factor in underestimating the extent of the epidemic, especially in the years before 1998. In Switzerland, the Republic of Ireland and France, feed bans were introduced in 1990, and recent statistics indicate that the number of infected animals is levelling off in both Switzerland and Ireland. ⁴