Volume 6: Human Health, 1989-96
8. Development of guidance on occupational risks from BSE and other TSEs
1993
The CDTFZ & BSE meetings put on hold

The CDTFZ & BSE meetings put on hold

8.129 After the meeting on 1 October 1992 it seems that the group did not meet again for some time. On 25 August 1993, Dr Ide (Senior Employment Medical Adviser) wrote to Dr J M Wattie (Senior Employment Medical Adviser):

Mr Gompertz tells me that you are now Madam Chairman of this Committee.

You will remember that it was convened in 1989 following the publication of the Southwood Report on Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE). The Working Group's purpose was to provide HSE with consistent advice about this problem. This function was discharged, but the group acquired a momentum of its own and decided to take an interest in zoonoses generally. This resulted in the publication of 'The Occupational Zoonoses' last year.

The last meeting took place on 1 October 1992 and a further meeting was tentatively scheduled for 17 March 1993, but did not take place since there was nothing which merited discussion, and the group became dormant. ¹

I enclose a cutting from the "Glasgow Herald" of Friday, 13 August. I don't know if the MRC Unit for CJD has merely resulted in improved collection of statistics and I have no idea what the year-on-year fluctuation of cases of CJD has been in the past, although I anticipate being able to get some up-to-date information on this at a meeting of Consultants in Public Health Medicine that I will be attending in Edinburgh on 2 September.

Our advice to HSE and others was based partly on the view expressed in the Southwood Report that BSE had a mean incubation period of 4 years, and that following the imposition of the animal products feed ban in July 1992 that the numbers of cases of BSE would begin to fall from the corresponding time in 1992. The figures for BSE are roughly confirmed by my colleagues at the Communicable Diseases Surveillance Centre in Ruchill Hospital, Glasgow, so the decline does not seem to be happening.

Do you think it would be wise to call a meeting of the Working Group in the not too distant future to review the situation and prepare a 'Plan B' if necessary?

8.130 The Inquiry has not seen any response to this minute. However, it seems that the Group did not meet for some time.