Citation
(2003), "ILSI Europe report on transmissible spongiform encephalopathy as a zoonotic disease", Nutrition & Food Science, Vol. 33 No. 6. https://doi.org/10.1108/nfs.2003.01733fab.002
Publisher
:Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2003, MCB UP Limited
ILSI Europe report on transmissible spongiform encephalopathy as a zoonotic disease
ILSI Europe report on “transmissible spongiform encephalopathy as a zoonotic disease
ILSI Europe is pleased to announce its new report on “transmissible spongiform encephalopathy as a zoonotic disease” (see also www.ilsi.org/file/TSE.pdf).
Transmissible spongiform encephalopathy (TSE) is a slowly progressive, uniformly fatal neurodegenerative disease that affects several animal species as well as humans. The prototype TSE is scrapie, a naturally occurring disease of sheep and goats. The most important TSE is Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD). No direct causal connection between these two diseases has ever been documented, and the concept of any form of human TSE as a zoonotic disease lay latent in scientific thinking for decades.
The landscape changed dramatically in 1996 with the suggestion that several cases of a variant form of CJD (vCJD) in young people in the United Kingdom might have resulted from exposure to bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE, or “mad cow disease”), itself probably the result of cattle having been exposed to scrapie-infected sheep carcasses rendered to produce meat and bone meal dietary supplements. Considering the large -scale human exposure to bovine products and the extraordinary commercial and public health consequences of BSE as a danger to humans, the suggested BSE-vCJD connection was not proposed without a solid epidemiological basis, and it has since been confirmed by biological and molecular studies.
This new ILSI Europe report places these concerns in the historical context of TSE, and attempts to distil the essence of what has become an intimidating volume of intermingled fact and fiction surrounding the story of “mad cow disease” and its consequences to human and animal well-being, with particular attention to food.
The report is prepared under the responsibility of the ILSI Europe Emerging Pathogen Task Force and is endorsed by the International Forum for TSE and Food Safety (TAFS). For copies please contact publications@ilsieurope.be