Professor calls for return to free-range farming methods
The Times
5 January 1991
Michael Hornsby
A return to free-range animal husbandry and an end to "cannibalism" in the feeding of livestock were called for by Richard Lacey, professor of microbiology at Leeds university, yesterday.
Professor Lacey, a forceful critic of government food safety policy, told farmers and food industry representatives that feeding animals a protein supplement derived from the same or similar species must cease at once.
He told the annual Oxford farming conference that agents similar to those responsible for bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), the mad cow disease, could infect species other than cattle and be amplified by this feeding method. "Public revulsion to what is in effect cannibalism is now profound. Food animals and birds should be fed, when necessary, with protein supplements of vegetable and possibly fish origin."
Feed containing bonemeal from sheep infected with scrapie is blamed by scientists for the BSE outbreak, which has led to the compulsory slaughter of more than 21,000 cattle. The inclusion of ruminant protein in cattle feed has been banned since July 1988. Bovine offal was banned in livestock and pet food last September after government scientists transmitted BSE to a pig in a laboratory experiment. Pigs and poultry can, however, still be given feed derived from their own kind.
"The solution to the BSE problem will remain a monumental task, particularly if, as seems possible, the disease is transmitted vertically (from mother to offspring)," Professor Lacey said. "There is also opportunity for the infectious agent to persist on grassland and infect subsequent generations of cattle." The best approach was progressively to replace infected herds with BSE-free herds.
He said that it would be a decade or more before it was known if BSE could be transmitted to humans. He had asked six senior medical microbiologists to estimate the impact BSE might have on the incidence of Creutzfeldt-Jakob Dementia (CJD), a related brain condition in humans which affects one person in two million. "Thirty per cent thought it would have none, 45 per cent that it might increase CJD cases by 100-fold and 25 per cent that the increase could be more than 100-fold."
Professor Lacey, who was given a respectful hearing by the farmers, also questioned the relevance of the government's policy of slaughtering flocks of laying hens where salmonella infection was found. "Since the salmonella gets into the egg from the ovaries, and is inherited vertically, the source must be the elite breeding flocks in France and The Netherlands over which we seem to have no jurisdiction. Whilst we will never rid chickens of salmonella, the development of a British salmonella-free elite breeding flock must be a reasonable objective," he said.
Free-range animal husbandry would reduce the production of meat and make it more expensive but of higher quality. Lower meat consumption could easily be offset by eating more vegetables, which were cheaper, so the net effect on prices would be neutral. "This is, of course, putting the clock back: mixed arable and livestock farms should once more reappear; the business-led dominance of intensive farming would decline," Professor Lacey said. Big food companies might no longer be economically viable.
