- PARIS - France is hoping
to restore consumer confidence in beef by starting a testing program for
mad cow disease.
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- Last month, ministers from the European Union met to
decide what should be done to keep bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE)
from spreading in Europe.
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- Since then, the EU has decided that slaughterhouse tests
of all cattle older than 30 months must be performed starting in July.
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- France has decided to begin the testing early. When the
program is up and running France says it will be checking 20,000 animals
a week. Any animal found to be infected will be destroyed.
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- Experts think older animals are more likely to have
the disease, having eaten more meat and bonemeal-based feed that could
be contaminated.
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- Consumers panicked last fall when infected meat may have
been sold in supermarkets. Sales dropped to 40 per cent.
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- Eating contaminated meat could cause the human form of
the disease, new variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD).
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- About 90 people have died from vCJD, most of them in
Britain, the hardest hit of any country. But cases have also been diagnosed
in France.
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- While beef sales are slowly bouncing back, the French
government hopes the new testing program will bring them back to normal.
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- But the tests cost about $100 per cow, which will be
passed on to the consumer.
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- And history shows that more testing will turn up more
cases something not likely to boost sales.
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