Over The Horizon

Investigating Mad Cows

The British government is recruiting Massey University researchers to help unravel some of the urgent questions it is facing in dealing with BSE (Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy) in the United Kingdom.

Gilruth Professor of Animal Health Roger Morris heads a team of veterinary epidemiologists, which has won world-wide recognition for its investigations of complex animal diseases. Within New Zealand the group is best known for its work on tuberculosis in wildlife.

Since 1991 Morris has been involved as an international reviewer of research on BSE in Britain. Now he and his group will provide people to bolster urgent investigative work on BSE, and its control, in order to resolve important policy issues. This is being done at the request of the British government, which will pay the cost of New Zealand assistance.

It is expected that up to two people from New Zealand will spend time in London to boost the research team there, and other tasks will be carried out at Massey University on behalf of the British investigators.

Morris is a member of a newly formed committee of the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations, which is to oversee future efforts to reduce international spread of epidemic animal diseases, particularly in relation to developing countries.

"We will be able to help ease the workload of the London researchers who have faced an extremely torrid few months, and keep right up to date with one of the most spectacular animal disease epidemics of recent times," Morris says.