- traditional slaughter practices in many small European slaughterhouses seem to increase the risk of spread of the disease variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD), the human form of mad cow. Five people in a village near Leicester, UK, probably contracted the disease in this way, British scientists announced today at a special meeting of the regional health authority. Because the techniques of killing were commonplace in many European countries where mad cow hit, experts fear that many more cases of vCJD occur.
Since 1996, at least 95 people in the UK died from the human version of mad cow disease, also known as bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE). Most scientists believe that vCJD can be caused by eating meat contaminated with BSE, but the link has not been firmly established. A chance for a breakthrough emerged in the last two years, when five young people died of vCJD within 5 kilometers from Queniborough, a small village northeast of Leicester.
Searching for the source of this group of diseases, Philip Monk, a communicable disease expert at Leicester Health Authority, and colleagues interviewed the relatives of the victims and 30 people matched the age in the region. The team also included 22 local butcher shops and grocery stores. The first butcher shop they visited gave them a hint: He split the head of a cow to remove the brains and sale. Meat can "easily be contaminated" in this way with potentially infectious materials of the brain, said Monk Other issues confirmed the suspicion. Four of the five victims - but only three of the 30 witnesses - purchased the four butchers meat that regularly used this practice of traditional butcher, banned in 1989 in Britain. the victims of vCJD were also 15 times more likely to have eaten meat from slaughterhouses who fired a bolt into the brain of a cow, which can leak brain tissue from the carcass.
This is the first evidence that vCJD is caused by contaminated meat during preparation, said Simon Cousens, a biostatistician at the London School of Hygiene & tropical Medicine. "They come with a very plausible explanation," he said. most European countries have recently banned these practices, but with an incubation period of 10 to 20 years, Monk said that "cases are likely emerge in other countries with BSE at least until 2016. "
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