THE mysterious spate of deaths from vCJD, centred on the Leicestershire
village of Queniborough, was caused by prime cuts of meat that were contaminated
as the animals were butchered. That’s the conclusion of an investigation into
the outbreak, which reported last week.
It has been hailed as the first serious attempt to explain how the BSE agent
gets inside its human victims. If the conclusions are correct, most of the
victims were infected years before the BSE epidemic peaked and incubated the
infection for 10 to 15 years before falling ill. That means it could be several
years before the…
