The inquiry into the BSE crisis has heard that the public was misled for five years about the threat of the disease.

The government's former Chief Medical Officer, Sir Kenneth Calman, told the inquiry he learned in 1995 that rules imposed on abattoirs in 1990 were not being properly enforced.

The rules were aimed at preventing dangerous cattle parts entering the food chain.

His major concern, he said, was that all the health advice to the public since the beginning of 1990 had been based on the assumption that the ban was effective - and that was now being called into question.

Sir Kenneth Calman: I would have told ministers

"The impression I had during that time was that the ban was in place and being properly policed," he said.

"If I had any concerns I would have acted in the way I did in 1995 and drawn it to the attention of ministers."

He told the inquiry that he had clashed with MAFF officials on how any press statement should be worded.

He said: "For me it was important the public were given all the information."

'Step too far'

Sir Kenneth said he felt it was very important any statement contained the potentially serious information that offal could have entered the human food chain.

"MAFF clearly found that a step too far for them and wanted to change that," he said.

Sir Kenneth, who held his senior health department post from 1991 until last month, was giving evidence to a public inquiry into Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE) set up by the Labour government.

Some 27 Britons have so far been diagnosed as having a version of CJD believed to be associated with the BSE epidemic which swept Britain's cattle herds in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

But experts say that because of the long incubation period, it could be several more years before the full impact is known.

Britain has slaughtered more than one million cows since 1996 in an effort to stamp out BSE and to end a European Union ban on the export of British beef.

However, so far the ban has been lifted only in the case of Northern Ireland.