Wed, Apr 5, 2000
BRUSSELS (AP)--The European Union on Wednesday agreed to start E.U.-wide testing for mad cow disease as of Jan. 1, 2001, focusing on animals that die on farms, are killed because they are sick or are suspected of suffering from neurological disorders.
A panel of E.U. veterinary experts endorsed a European Commission proposal for random testing of 65,000 animals a year that die before reaching the slaughterhouse.
"The test results should provide a more accurate picture" of the incidence of mad cow disease in the union, E.U. Consumer Affairs Commissioner David Byrne said in a statement. He said the program would be evaluated after six months.
The new tests will focus on the 41 million cattle in the E.U. that are over two years old. One percent is at risk of mad cow disease and of those 400,000, at least 65,000 will be surveyed in "rapid post-mortem tests."
Byrne again urged E.U. governments to adopt his proposal of last fall to remove such cattle parts as the brain, spleen and spinal cord.
When processed into animal feed, these "specific risk" parts are seen as key to infecting cattle with mad cow disease. Only eight of the 15 E.U. governments have made the removal from the food chain mandatory.
There is currently no such systematic E.U.-wide testing for mad cow disease.
The tests the E.U. agreed to carry out have been used in Switzerland.
Mad cow disease, formally known as bovine spongiform encephalopathy, is believed to cause a similarly brain-wasting ailment in humans known as Creutzfeld-Jacob disease.
A BSE outbreak in Britain in the 1990s led to a global ban on exports of British beef. That ban was lifted in August, 1999, except by France which has consequently been taken to court by the European Commission.
Although the scare over British beef is over, new cases of mad cow disease continue to be reported. France has reported 12 new cases in the first three months of this year against 39 for all of 1999.
New cases of the disease are expected to break out in France until 2002, five years after authorities took rigorous measures to prevent more outbreaks. Mad cow disease has an average incubation period of five years.
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