http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns227027

BSE: Europe admits it's mad

As dozens of unsuspected cases are revealed across the continent, the
truth is starting to emerge


THIS was the year Europe finally owned up to the mad cows in its midst.
For years, scientists had been telling just about every European country
that they had fed way too many British cattle to their herds to be as
free of BSE as they claimed. Now that better surveillance has revealed
dozens of unsuspected cases across the continent, the truth is starting
to emerge.

Just how bad is it? We'll find out next year, when a massive and
unprecedented biochemical campaign will begin in the European Union.
Millions of slaughtered cows will be tested for BSE.

Why does this make Europeans winners? Their beef industry is devastated,
consumers are panicking, and some are probably already infected with
vCJD, the human form of BSE. But now, at least they can start to reverse
the damage.

While their governments turned a blind eye to mad cow disease, Europeans
happily ate cow brains in their sausages and burgers--some of which, we
now know, were infected. Germany, insisting it had no BSE, even blocked
efforts by the European Commission to stop it spreading. Then, in
November, it found its own mad cows and is now leading the charge
against the disease. That alone is good news. So is the ban, from
January, on feeding livestock any rendered animal remains other than
fat.

Yet this is only the beginning of a monumental task. We also need to
find out whether sheep, pigs and other animals that may have been
exposed to BSE are safe to eat. Europe's long insouciance probably left
thousands of its animals, maybe even its very soil, contaminated. It
could take decades to eradicate.

Elsewhere, the plague may still be spreading, unseen and unlooked-for:
infected British cattle and their remains were exported to meat
producers from Texas to Thailand. These other countries need to hunt for
trouble more energetically than Europe did.

Debora MacKenzie
From New Scientist magazine, 23 December 2000.