SCIENTISTS last night said that some 446,000 BSE infected cattle were eaten by the public in Britain before the ban on specified offal in 1989.
A further 283,000 animals were estimated to have entered the food chain before the end of 1995.
The findings emerged from research carried out on behalf of the Wellcome Trust and the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food.
The scientists' research, published in today's Nature magazine, says that Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy, or mad cow disease, is in a phase of rapid decline and will continue to disappear whether cows are culled or not.
A team of eight scientists carried out the research at Oxford "University and used information from 1995.
In response to the report the British National Farmers Union last night hailed as "positive" the news that BSE will fade close to extinction by the year 2001.
The NFU said their main priority now was to ensure that consumer confidence was boosted by the announcement.
The report confirmed that the disease was on the way out and there was no scientific need for cattle to be culled, the NFU claimed.
The report in fact concludes that the BSE epidemic in Britain will fade close to extinction by the year 2001. It is in a phase of rapid decline and will continue to disappear whether cows are culled or not, the researchers found.
The findings call into question the emergency selective cull of cattle more than 30 months old.
"Our primary aim is to ensure that consumers have confidence in the steps that are taken," Mr Trevor Hayes, head of public affairs at the NFU, said last night. "That's a priority and it has to be a priority. Compared to some other European countries, consumer confidence here has improved considerably.
At the same time, farmers will; till have some anxious moments as to what will happen when and where.
"The evidence that has been presented today would appear to show that there's no need to have as big a selective cull of cattle as has been indicated. That's a matter that will have to be discussed here and within the European Union."
"It is difficult to estimate when the disease will be absolutely gone, but there will be a negligible number of cases by the year 2001," said Mr Christy Donnelly, a scientist working on the project at Oxford University.
"We estimate of the total number of cases only 5 per cent will happen in the future. In other words we have already seen 95 per cent of the total cases.
Spokesmen for the meat industry concentrated on the positive implications of the report.
"We have said all along that we expect BSE to fade out by the end of the century," said Mr Phil Saunders of the Meat and Livestock Commission.
"But at the end of the day we have to look at consumer confidence. We must be sure that people understand that British beef is safe.
"We have to be careful before we shake up the whole system again".