Britain Recalls Vaccine Because of Mad Cow Disease Fears

      LONDON, Oct. 20 (UPI) -- Britain recalled a polio vaccine made from calf serum Friday and travelers to Europe were warned not to eat French beef, raising new fears about the spread of mad cow disease.

      The British Department of Health said it was recalling all stocks of a particular brand of the vaccine used to inoculate children and travelers abroad because of a breach of health guidelines in its manufacture.

      A spokesman said "hundreds of thousands" of doses of the vaccine had been given since last year. The manufacturing company, Medeva, held a third of the market until it stopped producing the vaccine in September.

      Industry experts said the vaccine contained a growth agent made from calf serum from Britain -- a violation of guidelines specifying that only bovine material from countries not affected by mad cow disease should be used in the manufacture of medicines.

      The Food Standards Agency, meanwhile, sought to minimize fears about the safety of "legally sold" beef from European Union countries after a scientist and leading adviser warned that some beef imported from EU countries might come from cattle infected with bovine spongiform encephalopathy, BSE, or mad cow disease.

      BSE has been linked to the incurable Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD), which is known to have killed at least 14 people in Britain this year.

      The agency admitted that controls against mad cow disease in European countries had varied, and Britain continued to ban the import of older animals -- the focus of concern expressed by Harriet Kimbell, the consumer representative on a BSE advisory committee.

      Kimbell, principal law lecturer at Guildford College of Law, and other experts on the committee said continental beef from cattle aged more than 30 months might be entering the food chain in Britain. Britain requires all cows over that age to be slaughtered, but France does not bar those cows from human consumption.

      She said she won''t let her sons eat beef in France and warned tourists to stay away from it while traveling in Europe.

      Experts have expressed concerns about risks from beef produced not only in France but also in Ireland, Portugal and Switzerland because those countries don''t have the same strict controls as Britain.

      Mad cow disease spread in British cattle in the 1990s, decimating livestock, destroying tens of thousands of farming businesses and hitting meat exports.

      Britain slaughtered more than a million infected cattle, but its meat exports remain banned from many countries. France still refuses to lift its ban on British beef imports in defiance of an EC ruling, but its own beef was banned abroad, including some states in the Gulf.

      BSE''s degenerative human form, the CJD, cannot be treated and slowly destroys victims'' brain functions until they are paralyzed, brain damaged, unable to speak and in constant pain.

      Peter Smith, the committee''s acting chairman, said one cow a year under the age of 30 months was estimated to be killed in Britain for human consumption at a time when it was within 12 months of developing BSE.

      "We think its likely that in some other countries the number of animals going into the food chain within that category is larger because they don''t have the over 30-month rule," he said. "Animals might be going into the food chain further into the incubation period."

      Asked whether British beef was still a greater health risk than French beef, Smith said: "I think one could make a cogent case for saying that the reverse is true."

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