The British government's expert committee on BSE issued a new recommendation this week. It escaped the notice of most in the media. Feeding poultry recycled wastes, such as meat and bonemeal or offal from their own species, should be banned, it said.

The SEAC warning did not rock consumer markets in the same way as the highly-controversial advice on beef on the bone did a few weeks earlier. Perhaps it was just one food-scare story too many.

But many of the food-scare-weary public may balk at the thought of consuming the Christmas 1997 turkey. This follows a month of grim news on beef - provoking new concerns about the human form of BSE, new variant CJD, and its risk of transmission in blood - lamb and now poultry.

The SEAC fears the practice (now banned) of making cannibals of cattle by feeding them meat and bonemeal was responsible for generating BSE and the rogue prion protein that becomes an infectious agent. It believes the same could happen in poultry because of a particular gene known as PrP, found in both livestock and poultry.

The thinking is that BSE was the result of a random event which could occur in any species with a PrP gene.

It does not make for polite dinner-table conversation, but poultry are often fed with high-protein rations made of poultry and feather meal in intensive factory farms. Similar practices apply with pigs.

The logic suggests poultry and pigs could succumb to a BSE-type infection. With BSE history weighing heavily on the UK, a British ban due next year comes, like so many recent public health warnings, because there is no definitive proof to say it will not happen.

Agriculture needs a safety profile to match the pharmaceutical industry's. It remains to be seen what stance Ireland will adopt.

Is there a crumb of comfort for the Irish consumer? Most emphatically yes, says Prof Mike Gibney of the nutrition and dietetics unit of Trinity College Dublin.

He is one to heed, for he sits on the Scientific Steering Committee, the EU's most influential on food safety. Moreover, he chairs its affiliated working group on BSE.

It all comes down to issues of risk, he says. If it was possible to take all of the recently-articulated food safety threats to humans together, their combined risk would be far less than that from chronic disease associated with inactivity and poor diet.

"And this has always been the case."

There is probably no one in a European hospital because of additives. But there will be many in hospital this Christmas because of poor diet and lack of activity that will cut years off their lives.

Food safety is big news because of trade, its association with acute and more "immediate" illness, vested interests and political factors.

Yet obesity has doubled in incidence in Britain over the past decade. It translates into dramatic lifestyle change due to adult-onset diabetes and hypertension.

He accepts food safety is an issue but the biggest risk under that heading "is in the kitchen". The risk of old-fashioned food poisoning is perhaps "a million times more than many of the things that people are panicking about."

Risk assessment, risk management and risk communication are a major plank in the EU green paper on food policy. Scientists are more than capable of assessing risk. The commission has fallen down badly on the management and communication side.

Thus, the SSC recommended that lamb in some cases should be included in the list of BSE-risk material, and that beef on the bone should be banned in states with BSE. A short statement to that effect came from the Commission, leaving the press to speculate, often wildly.

There was no putting of risk in context with detailed explanation of pros and cons. Prof Gibney has strongly advocated the latter approach in a report to go to the commission.

The new Food Safety Authority of Ireland will put risk in context, says its chief executive, Dr Pat Wall.

First, the difference between BSE risk in Britain and Ireland is colossal. It is estimated that a Briton has a chance of one in 600 million of succumbing to nvCJD over the next year.

Cancers and heart disease are the big killers in Ireland, he adds. Yes, the turkey probably contains salmonella and campylobacter bugs. But proper precautions, correct food-handling and effective cooking eliminate the risk.

"Food poisoning is preventable by simple measures."

CJD expert Dr Paul Brown of the US National Institutes of Health is good on risk, too. On the threat of nvCJD to Irish people who received the suspect Amerscam blood product, he said:

"It's a bit like saying if an iceberg rolls into Dublin, people will die. But what are the odds on an iceberg rolling into Dublin?"