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EU Pondering on New BSE Measures
The European Union is considering measures other than the two now in force to effectively fight against the spread of the madcow disease, also known as bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE).
EU farm ministers, due to meet Monday, will be given new proposals by the European Commission and the EU veterinary committee on what other things to do to roll back the brain- wasting disease.
The commission, the executive body of the 15-nation bloc, is due to meet itself later on to decide on the new measures.
One of the new measures is likely to be the withdrawal and destruction of meat separated mechanically from the beef carcasses if the meat is obtained from the skull and spine of cattle over 12 months of age.
The EU has already instructed its member states to buy and destroy cattle over 30 months of age unless they are tested BSE- free and to ban for six months until June this year the use of the animal feed made of cattle meat and cattle bonemeal.
The two measures, expected to cost the 15 EU countries upwards of US$1bn, started early this month.
The EU farm ministers are scheduled to take a close look into the implementation of the two current contingency measures in their council meeting Monday while follow-up meetings will be held among EU veterinary experts in early February, January 30.
The EU needed to know in the first place how many cases of madcow disease had been found through its screening test program now in force. The member states are using a rapid test method known as Bio-Rad, a two-step biochemical test that gives results within 24 hours.
Yet the rapid test sometimes gives false positive results. In Belgium for one, the test initially showed 24 positive cases among the 7,550 head of cattle tested this month. But traditional mouse assay test finally confirmed only two positives.
The member states are also concerned with how much money they are going to spend on the buy-and-destroy scheme though the union has promised to pay up to 70 percent for the scheme and how much they have to spend on building storing facilities in that the post- mortem test has caused pile-ups in slaughterhouses in these countries.
Commission officials said last week that so far only 24,000 tons of cattle was bought for destruction. Some statisticians have estimated that as many as 1 million tons of cattle will have to be bought for destruction in the union this year.
Madcow disease first popped up in Britain in 1985 and has so far spread to 10 of the 15 EU countries. The disease even has the potential to spread or to have already spread to non-EU countries.
The world leaders and economists now meeting at their annual symposium in Davos of Switzerland have to set aside some special time to discuss the issue in that the disease is not only threatening the beef industry but also endangering the human beings.
A variant of the madcow disease, known as the Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease, has so far claimed the lives of 80 Britons and two French. A dozen others have been diagnosed as having contracted the human variant madcow disease, which so far is still defying any early diagnosis and treatment.
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