Volume 7: Medicines and Cosmetics
1. Introduction and overview
Audit of uses of bovine tissues

1.31 Our final chapter in this volume, Chapter 9, looks at an important issue that bore on the whole way BSE was handled. This was the absence of a comprehensive overview of the uses made of bovine products to ensure all were being adequately addressed. A recommendation on this had been made in the Tyrrell Report, coupled with its recommendation about examination of cosmetics, which it saw as an example of a potential pathway outside the range of items that had to date been considered and addressed in order to contain this new animal disease.

1.32 Finding out where parts of the cow carcass went and what they were used for was, on the face of it, an obvious and essential initial stage in developing a comprehensive and consistent response to the risk posed by BSE. It involved tracing bovine products through the various stages of their sale, processing, distribution and ultimate use, for example in food, medicines or cosmetics, and also identifying the occupational exposure that might be associated with each.

1.33 Some of the matters discussed in this volume - the time taken to phase out suspect medicinal products, the inconsistent treatment of intestines for food use and for pharmaceutical use, and the line taken on testing infectivity of FCS and BSA - might have been approached differently had they been identified in an audit of this sort. It would have ensured that all aspects were being covered, and that those concerned were informed about the risks in relation to their responsibilities. It would also have provided a means of checking progress and consistency. The same could be said of other matters described in other volumes, such as the absence of a coherent approach to waste disposal and the approach to occupational advice.

1.34 This chapter describes how the usefulness of an overview of all the uses made of bovine products had been identified, but not followed up, by the Southwood Working Party. Having been included in the Tyrrell Report in June 1989, it was subsequently endorsed by the MAFF Minister, Mr John Gummer, who told Parliament that it was going ahead. In fact, it became lost in the long grass. It was revived again in January 1995 and eventually put in hand, at least partially, in June 1996.