NR APZA
AU Fletcher,D.
TI Tighter Curbs on Mad Cow Disease (BSE)
QU Electronic Telegraph - Artikel übermittelt von David J Knowles, dknowles@dowco.com
IA http://envirolink.org/arrs/news/bse_in_the_news.html
PT Zeitungsartikel
VT
New controls to prevent meat contaminated with mad cow disease getting through to consumers are expected to be imposed today.
The move follows a disclosure by Douglas Hogg, Minister of Agriculture, yesterday that he was considering tighter safeguards on abattoirs after 17 incidents in which traces of spinal cord - a material banned from the human food chain - were found on beef carcasses in slaughterhouses. Several breaches of the rules had been uncovered by state veterinary surgeons since Mr. Hogg summoned abattoir operators to his office in Whitehall three weeks ago for a dressing down. He demanded 100 per cent compliance with the rules to protect public confidence on the safety of beef.
Mr. Hogg told farmers yesterday at Smithfield FarmTech, the new-look London winter agriculture show, that he would be considering further measures to tighten abattoir controls. He repeated, on the eve of Budget Day, that the Government would not pay a penny to abattoirs to help with the cost of complying with the strict hygiene controls to keep beef safe.
Mr. Hogg said he could not give a "100 per cent categorical guarantee" that mad cow disease could not spread to people. But, he added, the scientific evidence suggested that BSE could not be transmitted to humans. The evidence suggested, he said, that Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (CJD) was not the result of "the ingestion of beef and related material".
As part of the Government's controls against BSE, which has caused the deaths of more than 155,000 cattle in Britain since 1986, specified offal - including the spinal cord, brain, thymus and spleen - are banned from the human food chain and must be destroyed. These materials are deemed the most likely areas where the deadly BSE agent is found. BSE has never been found in beef itself. But with beef sales now showing signs of damage from a string of TV programmes and newspaper articles about increasing CJD victims, ministers and farmers are dismayed about abattoir lapses which threaten to undermine consumer confidence. The state veterinary service recently made surprise visits to 193 abattoirs and in 92 found failings in the handling of the high risk offal, While most breaches were "comparatively mild" - such as inefficient staining of discarded offal to keep them out of the food chain - there were 17 more serious breaches. In one case, a third of an animal spinal cord was found attached to the beef carcass after it had been dressed by slaughtermen.
Mr. Hogg regretted the current dispute between farmers and abattoir operators who are trying to impose a 3.50 pound levy per animal on farmers to meet the cost of disposing of unwanted offals.
AD David Fletcher
SP englisch
PO Internet
OR Prion-Krankheiten 3