BBC Environment Correspondent Margaret Gilmore reports from the inquiry

The former Chief Medical Officer Sir Kenneth Calman told the inquiry on Monday that Mr Meldrum failed to pass on vital evidence of the dangers posed by BSE.

Mr Meldrum's evidence, presented as a written statement, is the clearest picture to date of how the cattle disease emerged, how it persisted and how it was dealt with.

As chief veterinary officer of the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food from 1988 to 1997, Mr Meldrum said that he pushed the government to ban types of offal that were potentially infected with BSE.

'Slow to respond'

According to his evidence, slaughterhouses were then instructed to remove these parts and he predicted that by 1992-1993 the disease would be successfully eradicated.

By 1994, Mr Meldrum said that he had suspicions the ban was being flouted. It emerged shortly afterwards that potential BSE-carrying offal was being fed back to cattle, thereby creating "more and more cases of BSE".

It also came to Mr Meldrum's attention that some spinal cords had not been removed from cattle slaughtered for food and therefore there was a risk that BSE could pass back into the human food chain.

The former civil servant has been heavily criticised in the BSE affair as "secretive", "slow to respond" and of "showing more concern for the livestock industry than the health of people".

Long incubation

Mr Meldrum said that on the contrary he was "always keen to be open" and publish what he knew.

He did, however, suggest that there was some substance to the accusations of delays by the authorities.

He described Ministry of Agriculture policy as "keen to publish where possible, but also very concerned about generating publicity that could be adverse to the economy of the livestock industry".

Addressing the inquiry on Monday, Sir Kenneth said he had learned in 1995 that rules imposed on abattoirs in 1990 were not being properly enforced.

He said his major concern 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.

Twenty seven people in the UK 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.