Mad cow disease strikes Spain

MADRID, Spain -- The first case of mad cow disease has been detected in Spain.

A case of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) was also suspected in a second cow and both have been destroyed, Agriculture Minister Miguel Arias Canete said on Wednesday.

With six new cases of the disease also confirmed in France, the European Union (EU) announced on Wednesday its plans for the testing of millions of cattle next year.

In a bid to discover how far BSE has penetrated Europe's herds, all cattle destined for the food chain aged above 30 months will undergo post-mortem tests.

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"By putting these tests in place ... we're getting results," the EU's food safety commissioner David Byrne said.

"By doing these tests and making these findings we're making considerable progress in the fight against BSE," he added.

The programme, endorsed by the EU's Standing Veterinary Committee, will start in July 2001 and involve up to seven million cattle.

The brain-wasting human form of BSE, variant Creutzfeld-Jakob disease (vCJD), has so far killed more than 80 people in the UK and two in France.

The two cows, which had been born in Spain from Dutch and Austrian stock, were from the northwestern region of Galicia, the agriculture ministry said.

"There is no information to lead us to believe that we are facing an epidemic," Arias Canete said. "There is no risk of contaminating the food chain."

State radio said more than 20 other cows in the Galicia region were destroyed after being in contact with the two animals.

Some Spanish farm organisations reacted angrily to the announcement with the Union of Small Farmers accusing the government of not acting fast enough to protect Spanish beef from infection.

In France, the six new cases brought to 109 the number of infected cows detected since the beginning of the year, the French farms ministry said on Wednesday.

Greece has begun banning some French beef following the example set by EU partners Italy, Spain, Austria and the Netherlands as well as the Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary, Russia and Oman.

Reuters contributed to this report.

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Spanish Government Directory
Directory of French Government
Britain's Ministry of Agriculture - BSE Information
Human BSE Foundation
World Health Organization - BSE fact sheet

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