Volume 3: The Early Years, 1986-88
4. The ruminant feed ban
Introduction

4.1 In this chapter we describe the introduction of the ruminant feed ban. We consider the merits of the decision to grant a period of grace before the ban came into force. We look ahead at evidence which demonstrated that the ban had not been fully implemented, and consider how this came about.

4.2 Had it been possible for the ruminant feed ban to remove at a stroke all ruminant protein from the diet of cattle, later chapters of the BSE story would have made much happier reading. The incidence of BSE would have been confined to cattle born before the ban, save insofar as infection was directly transmitted between animals. The important question of whether such transmission could occur would have been more readily answered. Cattle born after the ban (BABs) would have been limited to comparatively few, if any, cases of maternal transmission (see vol. 2: Science). Culling of the offspring of known victims of BSE cows would have hastened the elimination of the disease. The human health risk would have been reduced and the easing of export restrictions would have been likely.

4.3 In the event, a growing number of BABs brought first concern and then consternation as realisation dawned that there had been initial widespread disregard of the ruminant feed ban and, much later, that cross-contamination at renderers and in feedmills and on farms had been permitting the infection of cattle as a consequence of small quantities of ruminant protein, some of it consisting of Specified Bovine Offal (SBO), being mixed into cattle feed. On our analysis the primary causes of this sorry story were not so much shortcomings in monitoring the Regulations, but a lack of foresight when the Regulations were introduced, coupled with false assumptions as to the size of a fatal dose. We shall first set out the relevant facts in relation to the ruminant feed ban before turning to analyse what went wrong.