Scientific Opinion on BSE Risk in Bovine Intestines

Abstract According to Regulation (EC) No 999/2001 certain ruminant tissues, designated as Specified Risk Material (SRM), must be removed from the food and feed chain to protect the health of consumers against the risk of BSE. The intestines, from the duodenum to the rectum, of bovine animals of all ages are currently included in the list of SRM. The “TSE roadmap” of the European Commission (EC) foresees amendments of the current SRM list based on newly evolving scientific knowledge while ensuring and maintaining a high level of consumer protection. EFSA was requested by the EC to evaluate the current risk of BSE linked with the use of bovine casings for the production of sausages. EFSA's assessment was based on new but limited experimental scientific data demonstrating that in addition to ileum, also jejunum may harbour infectivity when a large BSE inoculum dose was used to experimentally infect cattle, and a recent report that attempted to quantify the BSE infectious load in bovine sausage casings if produced in the EU from intestines excluding ileum. The calculated results considered in that report show that the individual human exposure from bovine casings, excluding ileum, produced in the EU (based on the calculated BSE prevalence in 2007) were “very low”. When the total human exposure in the EU per year is considered by the Panel, the obtained figures cannot be considered negligible, even when ileum is excluded. Several input assumptions of the report bore considerable uncertainties, in particular with regard to the amount of tissue calculated for production of bovine casings and the amount of infectivity potentially present in bovine intestine. EFSA concludes that the previous assessment of the BSE related risk of bovine intestines after processing into natural sausage casings remains valid.

Abstract licence: CC BY-ND

A person counts once a day per paper. We keep no cookie and no address: a reader is a hash that changes every day. Any month under five reads shows no number.