PARIS, April 18 (Reuters) - French Farm Minister Jean Glavany insisted
on Tuesday he was not hiding any new scientific discovery when he remarked
earlier that an unknown third factor may help spread mad cow disease.
The comment, made in an interview published on Saturday, has raised
fears that the spread of the deadly brain-wasting cattle disease bovine
spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) in France may be wider than thought.
Angry farmers and consumer groups on Monday demanded that the minister
clarify his remark.
"I wasn't giving you a scoop on Saturday in that interview. I said
things which French scientists have been saying for several years," Glavany
told LCI television. "I said that ... basically the scientists are in a
phase of uncertainty."
Glavany said scientists had identified the two most probable ways of
passing BSE, namely infected foodstuffs and cow-to-calf transmission, but
that they did not exclude a third way.
France has recorded 14 cases of mad cow disease this year, compared to
a total of 30 in 1999.
The farm ministry has repeatedly said France's BSE epidemic should
start tapering off in 2001, given that the disease has a five-year
incubation period and that tougher controls on cattle feed were introduced
in 1996.
"But since (scientists) don't exclude another mode of contamination,
they tell us that if it doesn't decrease towards the end of 2001 and does
not fade away, then there is probably, then there is maybe, a third way
which they have no proof of but which they have no proof against," he said.
Glavany said that while he wanted to let consumers and producers know
there was a potential risk of further contamination, his government was
doing everything in its power to control the spread of the disease.
"What I want to say to consumers is that, at the same time, the French
measures regarding BSE are surely the most sophisticated, the most rigorous
in the world," he told LCI.
France will start conducting tests for BSE in May on 48,000 cows, and
has taken several other steps to halt transmission of the illness. Glavany
did not exclude additional measures if new scientific evidence emerged.
He praised a provisional agreement by EU farm ministers on Monday on a
new system for labelling beef, which France had been lobbying for, but
pointedly criticised Denmark, the only country not to endorse the scheme.
Denmark announced in late February that it had detected its first case
of mad cow disease.
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(posted without permission)
