Farm ministers consider tighter bse controls

Europe’s farm ministers will today consider stepping up controls on mad cow disease at talks in Brussels.

The move follows the discovery in Germany last week of BSE in a cow aged 28 months two months below the newly-introduced EU-wide compulsory testing of all cattle over 30 months.

The 30-month rule has been in force since the start of the year, and no immediate changes are expected to be announced today.

‘‘There will be no decisions to reduce the testing age. The ministers will be stock-taking and looking at the effectiveness of the measures so far in place,’’ said one EU official.

But the emergence of a BSE case in a cow below the testing age is bound to raise concerns that the latest crackdown is not tough enough.

Some member states are looking for EU cash amid concerns that lack of national funds are preventing effective testing programmes being carried out.

‘‘In some countries carcasses are not being disposed of properly although in the UK we have national funding and this is not a problem,’’ said a UK Government spokesman.

EU Commissioner for health and consumer protection David Byrne is concerned to stop the spread of the disease and restore consumer confidence in meat for human consumption.

Brussels has banned the feeding of meat and bonemeal (MBM) to all animals, including pigs and poultry, and banned all cattle over 30 months from the human food chain unless previously tested for BSE and cleared.

The feeding of MBM to cows has been blamed for spreading BSE. Its use for ruminants has been banned across the EU since 1994, but it had remained in use for pigs and poultry.

Five of the 15 EU countries remain officially BSE-free, but the first cases in Germany and Spain late last year raised new fears that not enough has been done.

With an average incubation period of four to five years, the effectiveness of the current measures in place can only be fully assessed in 2004-2005.

In Britain reported BSE cases fell sharply last year by about 40% compared with 1999.

But the incidence of BSE remains far higher in the UK than anywhere else in the EU.