title: Area-level risks for BSE in British cattle before and after the July 1988 meat and bone meal feed ban.
abstract: In this paper we investigate area-level risk factors for BSE for the cattle population present in Great Britain between 1986 and 1997. By dividing this population into two birth cohorts, those born before the July 1988 ban on feeding ruminant-derived meat and bone meal to ruminants and those born after, second-order regional influences are distinguished from the strong first-order south-to-north gradient of area-level BSE risk using Bayesian hierarchical models that account for structured (spatially correlated) and unstructured heterogeneity in the data. For both cohorts area-level risk of BSE was increased by a more southerly location and greater numbers of dairy cattle, relative to non-dairy cattle. For the cohort of cattle born after the July 1988 ban on feeding ruminant-derived meat and bone meal area-level BSE risk was additionally associated with greater numbers of pigs, relative to cattle. These findings support the role of low level cross-contamination of cattle feed by pig feed as an influence on BSE incidence risk as the epidemic evolved. Prior to the 1988 meat and bone meal ban unexplained BSE risk was relatively uniformly distributed across the country whereas after the ban there were spatially aggregated areas of unexplained risk in the northern and eastern regions of England suggesting that local influences allowed BSE control measures to be less-successfully applied in these areas, compared with the rest of the country. We conclude that spatially localised influences were operating in divergent ways during the two phases of the epidemic.
authors.affiliation: EpiCentre, Institute of Veterinary, Animal, and Biomedical Sciences, Massey University, Private Bag 11-222, Palmerston North, New Zealand. m.stevenson@massey.ac.nz
authors.forename: M A
authors.initials: MA
authors.lastname: Stevenson
authors.forename: R S
authors.initials: RS
authors.lastname: Morris
authors.forename: A B
authors.initials: AB
authors.lastname: Lawson
authors.forename: J W
authors.initials: JW
authors.lastname: Wilesmith
authors.forename: J B M
authors.initials: JB
authors.lastname: Ryan
authors.forename: R
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Jackson
mesh_terms: D000821:Animal Feed; D000818:Animals; D001688:Biological Products; D002417:Cattle; D015331:Cohort Studies; D003710:Demography; D016643:Encephalopathy, Bovine Spongiform / Q000453:epidemiology* / Q000209:etiology / Q000517:prevention & control* / Q000635:transmission; D015994:Incidence; D008903:Minerals; D012307:Risk Factors; D006113:United Kingdom / Q000453:epidemiology
chemical_list: D001688:Biological Products; D008903:Minerals; C027762:bone meal