Bse: Forecast Incidence

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asked Her Majesty's Government:Whether they still expect BSE to "dwindle to insignificant proportions by the year 2001"

(www.maff.gov.uk/animal/bse/index.html); or, if not, what are their current projections for the likely number of cases in United Kingdom cattle for each of the next 10 years. [HL1698]

Projections of the number of BSE cases, derived from the Veterinary Laboratories Agency's (VLA) computer model, indicate that the epidemic will continue to decline. The latest VLA forecast as at 4 January 2000 is given in the table:

		95% confidence intervals
Year	Central estimate of confirmed cases	Lower	Upper
1999	2,083	1,774	2,392
2000	1,114	889	1,339
2001	470	325	615

The expectation is that the outcome, as in recent years, will tend to be closer to the upper 95 per cent confidence interval. Because of their increasing unreliability, neither the VLA nor the Wellcome Trust Centre for Epidemiology of Infectious Diseases makes predictions beyond 2001.

Volume 611: debated on Tuesday 28 March 2000