Open I

There is both good and bad news in this. The bad news is, of course, that BSE has spread further even though this was fully expected by those who understood the disease. The good news is that the risks are now understood and there is almost certainly the political will to act.

Also, only in Britain, Ireland, Portugal, France and Switzerland, a non-EU country, have more than a handful of cases been reported. The spread of the disease may, therefore, be caught. Because of the long incubation period for BSE, it is likely to be five or more years before current measures will show up in statistics.

Three distinct challenges face the French and certain other European countries - gauging the epidemic, controlling its spread and addressing consumers' food safety concerns. Measures proposed by European Commission and now belatedly being accepted by member states address the first two. As yet there appears to have been little attention, beyond posturing, paid to the third.

The Commission has for some time suspected that BSE was under reported. That the French program of random post mortem testing of fallen stock confirmed this came as no surprise. It has no doubt helped persuade European agriculture ministers to agree to a Europe wide program for testing fallen stock from January 1, 2001 and all over 30-month slaughter cattle from July 1, 2001.

Sine 1997 it has been known that the main if not only source of BSE contagion is the feeding of infected meat and bone meal to cattle. It was banned in Britain in 1988. Several subsequent measures to reduce infectiveness were tried over the years, but only a complete ban on the use of meat and bone meal in any livestock rations, implemented in 1996, has proved to be effective.

Most European countries imported British cattle and meat and bone meal both before the disease was identified but the infection was present, and to a declining extent up until exports were banned in the mid 1990's.

There is, therefore, no secret as to the risk and what needs to be done in either theoretical or practical terms to stop the spread of BSE in Europe. The European Commission's challenge has been getting member states to accept this.

It took six years for the commission to obtain last June's acceptance of Europe-wide regulation on the removal specific risk material from cattle carcases. And this only occurred after the Commission published a report undiplomatically naming names and suggesting that some countries might not have found BSE because they had not looked hard enough.

Even when faced with its current crisis, French president Jacques Chirac initially refused to accept prime minister Lionel Jospin's proposal for a necessary ban on any feeding of meat and bone meal in France.

Attitudes have recently changed with the acceptance of the need to implement a total ban on feeding meat and bone meal by Germany being particularly significant. Some member states are still hesitant, reluctant possibly to recognize that they are at risk and probably to give up the economic advantage of a cheap source of protein feed. But the commission now almost certainly has sufficient support of member states to implement effective programs.

On the food safety front little progress has been made. France's only immediate and direct measure has been a ban on the sale of beef on the bone. Much more is needed.

Knowing for certain that its beef supply is not safe, the French have two obvious options, to dump their whole herd slaughter policy and adopt an incentive system for BSE reporting, and to institute a program to remove all cattle more than 30 months - the age after which BSE starts to develop, from the food chain.

If the British experience is any guide, the first would be cost effective and do much to clean up the French beef supply in short order. It should also provide an immediate and accurate measure of the spread of the epidemic.

Unfortunately it will do little for consumer confidence. One of the merits of a whole herd slaughter policy is increased consumer confidence, even though it has little relevance to the spread of BSE. It would result in an increase in reported incidents of BSE. Further the intense French media coverage of the beef crisis was precipitated by news that beef from a BSE implicated herd had found it way onto supermarket shelves.

The over 30-month option, although extremely expensive - the British program costs almost £400 million per year for a national cattle herd 25 percent smaller than the French herd, is the most likely choice. It would restore consumer confidence and reduce beef supplies offsetting the reported 40 percent drop in French beef consumption.

Once implemented it might convince the Commission's Scientific Steering Committee which rules on these issues over the safety of French beef and force those countries that have imposed bans on French beef imports to lift their restrictions.

November 28, 2000