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She died in the arms of her father, Roger, a company director, at the family's home at East Peckham in Kent, where she had been bedridden and comatose. Last month Mr Tomkins gave a moving and graphic account of the progress of her illness to the BSE inquiry chaired by Sir Nicholas Phillips, describing how she had "howled like an injured animal".

Mr Tomkins said last night: "Clare had been slightly deteriorating over the last couple of weeks but she passed away very peacefully in my arms. The important thing for us is that she is now at peace. She has been at home now for eight months and has really fought hard. We have had so much to talk to her about. Even if she has not responded, we have assumed she has been listening."

Miss Tomkins' case was unusual because the first official diagnosis of BSE was in 1986, a year after she had stopped eating meat. Scientists now believe that considerable numbers of cattle incubating the disease passed into the food chain before then and that Miss Tomkins must have eaten infected meat from one of them. If this hypothesis is correct, it suggests that the incubation for new-variant CJD in humans must be at least 12 years.

Before Miss Tomkins died, officially recorded deaths from the disease stood at 24. Scientists diagnosed her condition from a biopsy of her tonsils. Normally, it is possible to make a definitive diagnosis only by post-mortem examination of the brain. Before she fell ill, Miss Tomkins worked in the pet department of a garden centre near her home in Tonbridge, Kent. She first showed signs of abnormal behaviour in 1996.

Mr Tomkins told the BSE inquiry that his daughter had been a healthy seven stone, but then began losing weight and suffering from unpredictable mood swings. She was prescribed anti-depressants and given electro-convulsive therapy before a correct diagnosis was made.

Meanwhile, the parents of a man who died last October from new-variant CJD are demanding an inquest into his death. Chris Warne, 36, was a computer analyst and a keen sportsman. His parents, Terry and Shirley, are seeking legal advice on whether they can challenge the refusal of the Derby Coroner to hold an inquest, usually held only when a death is deemed to be violent or unnatural.

"We feel Chris was poisoned and it should not have happened ... that somebody killed him," Mr Warne said. "We saw our son go from a young man as fit as a fiddle to comatose."

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