Thousands ‘may have been exposed to BSE meat’

Catherine Shanahan

Dr William Murphy said there was “clearly a problem” with the food supply in Ireland around a decade or more ago when the people involved in two recent cases would have contracted the disease.

Dr Murphy’s remarks in the Irish Medical News follow recent confirmation by the Department of Health of another “probable case” of variant-CJD in Ireland, the second in less than a year.

“How shocking is the fact that people go down with this disease from eating food in Ireland?” Dr Murphy asked.

He said he was not diminishing the risk posed by the blood supply, but there was clearly a problem in the past with contamination of the food supply.

“Clearly there was with these two patients having come down (with vCJD) from eating food in Ireland. They were infected in their teens or earlier, and hundreds of thousands of our children have been exposed to contaminated food. I find that deeply frightening.”

Dr Murphy said it was too early to say if more cases would emerge, given generational changes in meat consumption, but added “the current estimates are only estimates”.

He would not comment on whether he was happy with the response to BSE from the agricultural sector, saying he had no particular expertise in that area, but it was “just luck” that vCJD from food was not more widespread.

In response, the Department of Agriculture said: “We operate a range of controls under contract to the Food Safety Authority to protect public health and eradicate BSE. These measures have been enhanced

as scientific knowledge evolved and their implementation is subject to audit by the FSAI and the Food and Veterinary Office of the EU.”

Dr Murphy said the Irish Blood Transfusion Service (IBTS) had taken all possible measures to try to prevent what had happened in the recent case (where the person with probable vCJD had donated blood). He

said more blood donors could develop vCJD. He said the person had donated earlier this year and would not have been deferred under the IBTS’s precautionary vCJD measures and had never lived in Britain. “Our estimates were there could be between none and 15 cases anticipated in Ireland; most likely there would be one and we now have two Irish indigenous cases; so there was always the possibility that there would be blood donors involved.”

He said there was a need for immediate implementation of alternatives, where appropriate, to allogeneic blood transfusion (blood from an unrelated donor), such as autologous donation (blood donation by the person having the surgery). “I think any proven method of reducing your need for blood as indicated should be implemented as a priority. And these are covered in the recommendations of the Blood Strategy Implementation Group and I think implementation of these recommendations should be given top priority.”

A spokesperson for the Department of Health said a meeting will take place between department officials, the IBTS and the National Hospitals Office in early August in relation to the recommendations, particularly the establishment of a National Blood Task Force and a National Transfusion Committee.

In relation to a possible filter to remove vCJD from blood, he said two filters are being considered. The IBTS has carried out pre-clinical trials on one system, which looked promising.