Animal-free plastics skyrocket for medical components
By Doug Smock
Published: February 9th, 2012
Several resin producers now offer grades of plastics that are "animal free" in response to concerns about potential contamination from bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), commonly known as mad-cow disease.
Fears about the neurological disease peaked in the United Kingdom in 1993 at almost 1,000 new cases per week. Since then, the numbers of BSE cases has dropped sharply; 14,562 cases in 1995, 1,443 in 2000, 225 in 2005 and 11 cases in 2010, according to the US Center for Disease Control.
However, the impact of the disease on the plastics industry seems to have been growing inversely to the actual incidence of the disease.....
