Volume 9: Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland
Part 2: Scotland
10. Chronological account of specific Scottish issues
Emergence of BSE
The course of the disease in Scotland

10.1 Mr Gordon Gerrand, Assistant Chief Veterinary Officer based at DAFS, was the first member of the Scottish Office animal health team to learn about the disease. He received a copy of a minute about BSE dated 4 June 1987 from the Chief Veterinary Officer (CVO), Mr William Rees, to Mr (now Sir) Donald Thompson, the Parliamentary Secretary at MAFF. ¹ However, this knowledge appears to have remained strictly within the SVS team in Scotland. ² It was not, for example, copied to Mr George Thomson (Assistant Secretary, Animal Health, at DAFS), who said in evidence that he 'would normally have expected that sort of thing to have been copied to him'. ³ Mr Scudamore, at that time Regional Veterinary Officer for South Scotland, first learned of the disease in September 1987 at an informal meeting of RVOs. ⁴

10.2 There is some conflict of evidence about how the implications of BSE were first raised. Dr Gerald Forbes was Senior Medical Officer (SMO) at SHHD from January 1985 to December 1989, with responsibilities for communicable disease and environmental health (he was later to become Director of the Environmental Health (Scotland) Unit). He told the Inquiry that, on the basis of information he picked up informally when visiting MAFF, he wrote a series of memoranda to the CMO for Scotland (at that time Dr Iain Macdonald) during the last quarter of 1986 and the first quarter of 1987 dealing with various aspects of BSE. The memoranda identified a possible link between BSE and human encephalopathies and also suggested a ban on human consumption of cattle brains and spinal columns. These memoranda have not been found but, according to Dr Forbes, are likely to have been destroyed by the Scottish Office as a matter of routine. ⁵

10.3 Dr Macdonald, on the other hand, said that he did not become aware of BSE until the last few months of 1987, either after the first case of BSE was confirmed in Scotland or because of something Dr Forbes had said or written to him. ⁶ He did not accept that Dr Forbes's memoranda were submitted to him before this period or indeed at any other time. ⁷ He argued that it was not his normal practice to fail to acknowledge memoranda, and that Dr Forbes could have approached him in person had he done so. ⁸ He noted that Dr Forbes had contributed nothing on the subject of BSE to the Principal Medical Officer summaries (see paragraph 9.20) for the period October 1986 to September 1987, although he had contributed on a number of other subjects. ⁹ Finally, Dr Macdonald thought it unlikely that he would have overlooked the implications of the memoranda had he received them. ¹⁰

10.4 In the light of Dr Macdonald's comments, and since Dr Forbes in his evidence referred to Mr Keith Meldrum as holding the CVO post at the time he learned of BSE (when in fact Mr Meldrum did not take over from Mr Rees until June 1988), we have concluded that Dr Forbes's memory may have misplaced the precise time at which he became aware of BSE and pressed - as he undoubtedly later did - some serious concerns that he had.

10.5 Other documents seen by the Inquiry indicate that during this period the CVL was keeping tight control over information about BSE cases. The Assistant Secretary at DAFS, Mr George Thomson, told the Inquiry that the Department was made formally aware of BSE on 12 November 1987, when Mr Alistair Cruickshank, the MAFF Under Secretary responsible for Animal Health, sent him a copy of a submission made to the Parliamentary Secretary at MAFF by the Animal Health Division. The submission set out the state of play with respect to the incidence of the disease and action taken, and said that there was no evidence that BSE was transmissible to humans. Prior to this there had already been some press reports about the emergence of the disease, and one object of the submission was to provide 'strong defensive briefing' for Ministers. ¹¹

10.6 Lord Sanderson, the Scottish Office Minister with responsibility for Agriculture, received his first submission on the disease on 18 February 1988, when Mr Thomson sent him a copy of a MAFF submission on the subject which proposed the introduction of compulsory notification of the disease and a slaughter and compensation policy. ¹² Mr Thomson pointed out that the proposed action would not deal with subclinical animals and that there might be difficulties with a full compensation scheme. The same day he wrote to Mr Cruickshank at MAFF supporting the proposals but setting out three points the Treasury might raise: he was not sure why BSE should be regarded as harmful to humans when scrapie was not; he thought that the possibility of infected but subclinical animals entering the food chain would occur to people and raise public health fears over meat; and, finally, he was concerned that giving full compensation might be contentious given the lower compensation under other comparable schemes. ¹³ It was decided to await the reaction of MAFF Ministers. The submission was also copied to Mr Michael Forsyth, at that time Parliamentary Under-Secretary responsible for Health at the Scottish Office, who noted it but considered it to be an animal health issue in which the risk to human health was remote. ¹⁴

10.7 Medical Services of SHHD discussed the potential risk of transmission to humans in late February 1988, since SHHD had received copies of the correspondence between Mr Thomson and the Animal Health Division at MAFF. ¹⁵ Dr Macdonald recalled BSE being discussed at a meeting of CMOs in the early part of 1988. ¹⁶ At this stage, the incidence of BSE in Scotland was still at the same level as it had been in December 1987, with only six cases in March compared with an increased total of 490 in Great Britain as a whole.

10.8 Dr Macdonald's recollection appears to relate to the meeting in March 1988, when Sir Donald Acheson (CMO at the Department of Health in London) informed the CMOs for Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland of the imminent creation of the Southwood Working Party on BSE (see vol. 4: The Southwood Working Party, 1988-89). Dr Macdonald did not recall being involved in the decision to establish the Working Party, and the Scottish Office was merely informed of the decision once it had been made.

10.9 During April Mr Thomson sent a further submission to Lord Sanderson advising him of the possible implications of BSE for human health, including the prevailing view that there was no evidence to suggest BSE could be transmitted to humans. The submission also informed Lord Sanderson that a decision on the compulsory slaughter scheme had been deferred. ¹⁷ The following week Mr Thomson told Lord Sanderson of the formal announcement of Sir Richard Southwood as Chair of an expert Working Party and of the fact that no decision had been made about making BSE a notifiable disease or about the slaughter and compensation scheme. He promised to keep the Minister informed of any further developments. ¹⁸

The course of the disease in Scotland

10.10 The first case of BSE in Scotland was recorded in June 1987 and confirmed on 3 December, a year after official recognition of the new disease in England. By the end of December there were six confirmed cases in Scotland out of a total of 132 in Great Britain. ¹⁹ The incidence of BSE in Scotland was at its highest during 1993, when there were 2,199 cases. ²⁰ This was a year later than the peak in England. Only 0.38 per cent of a total cattle population of 2.1 million was affected by BSE, compared with 2.24 per cent in England. It is estimated that more than 50 per cent of all cases in Scotland were animals that had been born in England or Wales. ²¹

The arrangements for handling Scottish cases

10.11 The arrangements made at the start of the epidemic in Scotland - to examine all Scottish cases at Lasswade Laboratory near Edinburgh - were maintained throughout the whole epidemic. These arrangements included the full neuropathological examination of the brains of affected cattle. In England and Wales the numbers of brains for examination were much greater, and a method of diagnosis from a single slice of one section of the brain had been devised to speed throughput. A useful consequence of the Scottish method was that it enabled researchers to identify a new disorder in the brains of cows submitted as BSE suspects, but lacking the characteristic lesions of BSE. ²² The condition was first identified during 1988 and was initially called 'idiopathic brainstem neuronal chromatolysis', later BBD (Bovine Brain Disorder). The cause of BBD remains unknown and preliminary results have so far failed to confirm a link with the transmissible spongiform encephalopathies. ²³ However, the incidence of the disease mirrored that of BSE in that, as more suspect cases of BSE were submitted, so more cases of BBD were identified. ²⁴