![]() In 2017, developers hoped to decontaminate the site and build 20 homes with an estimated cost of £1.75million. Professor Alan Colchester, a neurologist at the University of Kent, warned that the area is a 'biohazard' and likely contains large quantities of contaminated materialĭespite the warning, builders and the public have expressed interest in the site. 'If you have places in an urban environment that has contamination, then there might be a case that we should tarmac it over completely.' ![]() 'Nothing should be done to encourage human activity around Thruxted Mill or the surrounding woodlands. 'Infected remains were left lying around and contaminated material is probably still lying in large quantities in the soil. 'And with CJD, we're talking about a seriously long incubation period - from a few months to several years. 'The worst-case scenario is that you could transmit the illness to animals or humans from environmental materials that have themselves been infected in the past. ![]() 'The point is that there are various ways you could come into contact with it. 'It's always been known that the infected agents for mad cow disease are incredibly resistant to normal decay and destruction and there will undoubtedly be some long-term contamination in the soil. Professor Colchester said: 'The site is a biohazard. The site, which is thought to have been originally developed as a saw mill in the 1960s, was shut down that year. Speaking of a lorry spilling tongues and bladders the size of a football in nearby Chartham in 2008, villager Peter Hancox said: 'I have lived here for about six years and we have frequently had fluid spillages, but this was one lump of guts too far. Piles of carcasses were reportedly dumped on the site.Īnd local residents complained of foul-smelling chucks of dead cattle, including legs and heads, being littered across surrounding roads. The downturn in cases is due to increased controls by health chiefs, including rules around animal feed and removing parts of the cattle most at risk of being infected.īut proteins called prion - which cause BSE - are extremely difficult to destroy and can remain infectious, such as by living in soil, for years.Īnimal remains were taken to Thruxted Mill during the 1990s and 2000s, to dispose of cattle infected with BSE. The verdict was the first to legally link a human death to mad cow disease. In August 1996, a British coroner ruled that Peter Hall, a 20-year old vegetarian who died of vCJD, contracted the disease from eating beef burgers as a child. There were 36,000 diagnosed cases of mad cow disease in Great Britain in 1992, leading to British beef exports being banned and dozens of people dying. There is no treatment and 177 people have been killed by the variant. Humans can contract variant Creutzfeldt-Jacob disease (vCJD) if beef products contaminated with central nervous system tissue from cattle infected with mad cow disease are eaten. It is believed to be spread by feeding calves meat and bone meal contaminated with BSE. The disease was first identified in Great Britain in 1986, although research suggests the first infections may have spontaneously occurred in the 1970s. Mad cow disease, or bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), is a fatal neurological disease in cattle caused by an abnormal protein that destroys the brain and spinal cord. ![]()
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