Fear of Mad Cow Disease Spreads - Paris
JOCELYN GECKER - AP 10nov00

PARIS  — Fear over mad cow disease swelled across Europe Friday, with France banning sweetbreads and the Swiss Red Cross severely limiting blood donations from people who spent time in Britain, where the beef scare exploded in 1996.

Officials said the moves were purely precautions against mad cow, which has been linked to a variant strand of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, which affects humans.

Yet alarm seemed to be spreading, and the European Union's health and consumer protection commissioner, David Byrne, urged EU member nations to go beyond a recent requirement that they randomly test their herds by January. The requirement was put in place after the number of cases of mad cow, or bovine spongiform encephalopathy, tripled in France to 90 this year, compared to 31 last year.

French authorities say the increase is due to the implementation of special detection tests.

Two people are known to have died in France from the human form of mad cow, Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease — compared to 81 people in Britain.

Byrne's statement urging more random testing came just two days after he spoke in reassuring tones, saying the number of infected cows was low — approximately seven cases per million cattle.

Geneva authorities, pressured by ``very worried'' parents, joined the ranks of nearly two dozen French districts that have pulled beef from school menus, said Philippe D'Espine, a spokesman for the city. Geneva's proximity to France — which surrounds the city on three sides — played a part in the decision, he said. The ban affects all beef — not just French imports.

In response to public concerns, Italian Agriculture Minister Alfonso Pecoro Scanio asked the EU's veterinary committee to hold an urgent meeting.

The Swiss Red Cross announced it was barring blood donations from people who spent more than six months in Britain between 1980 and 1996. Regional offices have until March to implement the ban.

Dr. Rudolf Schwabe, director of the group's blood transfusion service in Bern, said there was ``no proof but some evidence that it could be possible to transmit CJD with blood.'' He stressed that the measure was purely precautionary.

Schwabe said it likely will involve no more than 2,000 donors who were living in Britain as mad cow broke out.

In France, the Agriculture Ministry's special research section on mad cow announced it would ban sweetbreads, a delicacy widely served in French restaurants which is made from a cow's thymus gland. The one-year ban is a precaution, the ministry said.

Officials added that the sweetbread ban was based on advice from the country's food safety agency, but does not mean consumers who have recently eaten should be concerned.

The ban concerns cows born after May 1, 1999. Thymuses of cows born before that date were banned earlier. Cow intestines were banned last month.

Officials of France's leftist government have warned against what they call a `psychosis' over mad cow.

In an interview published Friday in the daily Liberation, Agriculture Minister Jean Glavany criticized a plan by France's largest farmers' union to withdraw from the market cows born before July 1996. He said it has ``no rational foundation'' in the fight against mad cow.

``If it were a public health measure, I would absolutely support it,'' Glavany said. ``But it's nothing of the sort.''

The farmers' union said Tuesday it planned to withdraw from the market older cows, born before France imposed strict measures on cattle feed in 1996. That is when mad cow disease became a palpable fear among Europeans because of its spread in Britain.

Beef prices have plunged at meat markets around France. One slaughter house in Quimper, in the eastern Finistere region, lost 65 percent of its business within a few days and may close its doors next week, France-Info radio reported.