Switzerland acts to curb BSE

BERNE, Switzerland -- Swiss politicians have brought forward a planned ban on meat and bone meal in animal feed in a bid to eradicate mad cow disease from the country.

The cabinet agreed on Wednesday to move the ban forward from the original date of March 2001, ordering all animal meal to be incinerated, on the same day Germany reported its third case of the brain-wasting disease.

Berne will pick up 30 million of the 40 million Swiss francs ($23.92 million) in extra costs for burning the meal in giant industrial ovens.

Switzerland has registered more than 350 cases of BSE so far, but the trend is lower as the number peaked in 1994 and 1995, and no cases of the deadly human form of bovine spongiform encephalopathy, that has killed dozens of people in Britain, have been reported.

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Earlier, a Bavarian cow was identified as suffering from mad cow disease -- the third case of the brain-wasting condition found in Germany.

A health authority spokeswoman in the town of Cham said a test had confirmed the latest case of BSE.

Two of the three cases now discovered come from Bavaria, which produces nearly 30 percent of German beef.

New safety measures were announced by German authorities on Tuesday, the same day Austria, which borders the region to the south and has so far been BSE-free, asked the European Union for permission to ban German beef.

Iran has also now suspended a contract to import 4,300 tonnes of meat from Germany in line with its import ban due to mad cow disease in Europe, the daily Hambastegi said on Wednesday. Iran imposed a ban on meat imports from Europe earlier this month.

German Health Minister Andrea Fischer is trying to calm consumer fears about the safety of eating sausages, the national delicacy, after a call by the EU's executive commission to stop the sale of wurst containing beef.

Fischer said there was no need to withdraw wurst from shops because animal parts believed to cause the human equivalent of BSE, new variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD), were no longer used in its production.

"There has been no cow brains in sausage for a year and a day. There is no reason to take dramatic steps," Fischer told German Radio.

Fischer has urged EU Food Safety Commissioner David Byrne to push for the bloc's ban on animal-based feed to become a permanent fixture and not be limited to six months, as it is at the moment.

Reuters contributed to this report.

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