Phillips Inquiry

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 3:23 pm on 15 February 2001.

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Photo of Mr John MacGregor Mr John MacGregor Conservative, South Norfolk 3:23, 15 February 2001

No. If I give way a great deal, I shall go on for too long. There are still a number of issues within the report with which I want to deal.

Paragraph 1151 of the Phillips report states: When our Inquiry began, most members of the public remained under the impression that BSE was scraple in cattle and that the reason why cattle food had become infectious was that renderers had altered their methods of production to the detriment of safety standards. Most of us in the House took that view; it was certainly my view. Therefore paragraph 166 in the Phillips report surprised me. It states: The epidemic of BSE may have started with a single diseased cow. Why should that cow have developed BSE? It is possible that the disease developed spontaneously as a consequence of a genetic mutation. The report states that that probably occurred in the early 1970s. It continues: There are other possibilities. No one will ever know. I took the received view—the best view of everyone at the time—that the cause was the change in the rendering of meat and bonemeal in the early 1980s and that sheep scrapie was coming through the process. That turned out to be partly right, as meat and bonemeal were the cause of the spread. However, according to Phillips, the rendering had nothing to do with it. I remember that the right hon. Member for South Shields raised that process with me frequently, but in fact rendering turned out to be a false cause.

I was surprised even more by the fact that scrapie had nothing to do with the cause. That is significant, as all the received scientific assessment at the time suggested that BSE came from scrapie, which led to the view that the risk to human health was remote. The reason for that was simple: scrapie had been around for 200 years, and had not had any consequences for human health.