NR ASNC
AU anonym
AK Reuters
TI France to ban slaughter method in move against BSE
QU Reuters World Report Tue, Mar 14, 2000
PT Pressemeldung
VT
France's food safety agency approved on Tuesday a proposed ban on "pithing," a method widely used in slaughterhouses which experts fear may increase the risk of "mad cow disease" spreading to humans through infected meat. It involves firing a metal bolt into the brain to stun the animal before killing it.
Experts say the bolt could release prions, the proteins which cause mad cow disease or BSE, from the brain while the animal was not yet dead, allowing them to spread into the meat.
The bolt, which is reused, might also carry the prions from one animal to another, the AFSSA food safety agency said in an opinion made public last week.
Meat from cattled infected with BSE - bovine spongiform encephalopathy - is blamed for human cases of new variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease or nvCJD, a deadly, brain-wasting disorder for which there is no known cure.
Slaughterhouses use pithing so that animals do not flail their limbs while being butchered, injuring workers.
The AFSSA agency said it approved the wording which the government proposes to use in banning it.
SP englisch