New conclusions from the Phillips Report (November 2000) caused widespread attention. Many of them had already featured in BSE: The Facts published almost half a decade earlier. Here are some examples of conclusions from the book:
p 49: 'Scrapie is not necessarily the agent which caused BSE by spreading to cattle.'
p 63: 'Although this alternative possibility has not been widely discussed, it may yet turn out that the BSE did not arise from scrapie.'
p 113: 'The practice of illegal burial is said to be widespread in France. One French farmer said, knowingly, "BSE, in French, means JCB".'
p153: 'Everyone seems agreed about the original source from scrapie in unsterilized cattle feed. It may be easy, but I believe it may be wrong. BSE could be an ancient disease of cattle, then this puzzling phenomenon would not be a necessary part of the argument. The original agent [may have] originated, not in sheep, but in cows.'
p157: 'It is just possible that sheep may have caught BSE from contaminated feed, and if so there may now be two spongy-brain diseases existing in the sheep population.'
The book also concluded that a couple of cases has been found in Germany, with hundreds more in France. Here is a list of the interviews, etc., given in connection with the Phillips report:
