Proceedings of a consensus conference: the screening of blood donors for variant CJD1 1This Consensus Conference took place at the Ritz Carlton Hotel in Montreal, Quebec, on March 26–28, 2003, and was chaired by Dr. Gilles Delage of Héma Québec.

Since the identification, in 1996, of the first case of variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD) in humans various approaches have been implemented and/or proposed to prevent this disease from being transfusion transmitted. In addition, a variety of possible laboratory-based approaches have been developed and will continue to be developed for the vCJD screening of blood donors. Various issues related to the implementation of such vCJD testing …