Scientific advice in support to risk management with regard to BSE

The paper provides an overview of the efforts put into place by the European Commission for assessing the risks for humans, animals and the environment resulting from the BSE epidemic. The risk assessments are carried out by the Scientific Steering Committee (SSC) and its TSE/BSE ad hoc Group. They are part of the EC's scientific advisory system in support of health and consumer protection policy, which comprises another 8 scientific committees. The process from the emergence of a possible reason for concern to the submission of a legislative proposal based on a scientific opinion is outlined and the careful, step-wise process of preparing a TSE risk assessment is explained. The TSE-related assessments are mostly qualitative. An example of a possible quantitative approach is given and it is shown that appropriate data and current scientific knowledge still do not permit the preparation of fully comprehensive quantitative risk assessments. Moreover, given the many unknowns and uncertainties, it is not evident that quantitative risk assessments would automatically provide the risk managers with a more appropriate tool in support of decision making. The multi-disciplinarity of the assessments is highlighted and an overview is given of the TSE-related risk assessments carried out since 1997. They cover a wide range of fields, including safe geographical sourcing of animals, infectivity inactivation by processing, human exposure and epidemiology.