A study of abattoir practices during the early years of the BSE epidemic in cattle has failed to provide evidence they were a factor in spreading the disease to humans.

Consultants reviewing the slaughter and cutting up of cattle in six rural areas of Britain in the 80s found some "very basic" sterilisation and hygiene procedures.

But there was no obvious association between the areas of the country in which people were known to eat brains as part of their diet and later cases of variant CJD, the human form of BSE.

The work, to be considered on Thursday by Seac, the expert committee on the diseases, was commissioned by the Food Standards Agency.

It followed a hypothesis put forward by public health officials that a combination of factors, including the use of older dairy cattle for beef, traditional slaughtering methods in small abattoirs and the sale of meat through small butchers, might explain a cluster of five vCJD deaths between 1998 and 2000.

The deaths were linked to possible exposure to the BSE agent in and around Queniborough, Leicestershire, in the early to mid-1980s, years in which the disease was rampant in herds but unrecognised as a threat to humans, in whom incubation periods are long.