France's Greens demand ban on animal feed
PARIS, Oct 20 (Reuters) - France's Greens party on Friday demanded an
immediate ban on the feeding of animal products to other animals
after a report cast doubt on French efforts to ensure that mad cow
disease was not passed on to humans. The Greens, junior partners in
France's Socialist-dominated coalition government, said new media
reports raised suspicions over the effectiveness of a 1990 ban on
meat and bone meal in cattle feed, and it was time for a blanket ban.
France banned the use of meat and bone meal in foodstuffs for cattle
herds in 1990 amid fears that they played a key role in transmitting
the deadly brain-wasting disease, formally known as bovine spongiform
encephalopathy (BSE).
But the left-wing daily Liberation said the state consumer fraud
agency, which analyses feed samples to ensure they comply with the
1990 law, had tolerated meat and bone meal in cattle feed for at
least two years -- albeit at less than 0.3 percent. ``In other words,
the discovery of cattle feed with only 0.29999 percent of meat and
bone meal is not penalised,'' Liberation said. The state consumer
fraud office, however, said the report was wide of the mark and that
animal feed producers were not let off the hook if traces of meat or
bone meal were discovered at levels below 0.3 percent.
``Below this level other more detailed checks are carried out at the
company, corrective steps are demanded, and legal action is taken if
they are not implemented,'' it said in a statement. The newspaper
acknowledged that it was not known how much infectious material was
necessary to transmit the disease but said the agency's standard
``defies logic.'' It indicated that even before 1990, meat-based
cattle feed contained only three percent of meat and bone meal.
``Three percent was all that was necessary to create 180,000 cases of
mad cow disease in Europe,'' the paper said.
GREENS DEMAND BAN
The Greens said the newspaper revelations called the current system
into question and demanded an instant ban on the use of meat and bone
meal in animal feed. ``The health repercussions of this laxity are
incalculable, and the immediate repercussions on cattle farmers
threaten to be devastating,'' the party said in a statement.
Separately, the animal feed producers' union SNIA refused to rule out
that traces of meat and bone meal still existed in cattle feed. ``As
long as meat and bone meal is allowed in feed for other animals, zero
(percent of meat and bone meal in cattle feed) does not exist and the
principle of 'traces' is the simple reality,'' SNIA said in a letter
addressed to a French e-mail list devoted to BSE.
France this week reported nine new cases of BSE, bringing the total
number reported in France this year to 71 against 30 in 1999. BSE is
believed to spread to people through infected food products, emerging
as a new variant of Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease. At least 70 people in
Britain and two in France have died from the new variant, a similar
brain-wasting disease for which there is no known cure.
Copyright 1999 Reuters Limited.