Beef can be eaten safely by everyone, both adults and children, including patients in hospital Chief Medical Officer Sir Donald Acheson

His reassurances were echoed by the government's Chief Medical Officer, Sir Donald Acheson, in a formal statement to underline his previous assertions that beef is safe to eat.

He said that after taking advice from leading scientific and medical experts, he had no hesitation in saying that "beef can be eaten safely by everyone, both adults and children, including patients in hospital".

The number of cases of BSE in cattle has shot up since the first case in 1986, and now stands at about 14,000, despite a government policy to slaughter all infected animals and prevent them getting into the food chain.

Fears have been mounting that the disease can jump species to cause the fatal human brain condition, Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (CJD).

The rising concern has led to 20 education authorities taking the decision to boycott beef products, taking beef off the menu in hundreds of schools across the country.

The Commons Agriculture Select Committee is to carry out an urgent inquiry into the possible threat to humans from BSE. It will report by the end of July, and Mr Gummer is to give evidence at its first session.

The Committee's chairman, Conservative MP Jerry Wiggin, is a former junior agriculture minister.

He said he considered there was no threat to humans from "properly cooked beef", and criticised local education authorities who had taken it out of school canteens.

The Labour Party's spokesman on agriculture, David Clark, however, said the government's handling of the BSE crisis had been a fiasco and showed it was incapable of handling sensitive food issues.

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