” “Further alarms” “

The BSE or “mad cow disease” crisis, which seemed to have been got under control, has returned to the front page stories of the press throughout Europe, also following a suspected case of Creutzfeldt-Jakobs disease affecting a girl in Sicily and new cases of Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE) in Denmark and Finland. On 6 February, the European Parliament, meeting in plenary session, approved a resolution condemning the “inadequate and belated implementation of EU legislation on BSE by some member States and the unacceptable lack of conformity by others”. We interviewed Costa Golfidis , of COPA-COGECA (Committee of the Agricultural Professional Organizations of the European Union and General Committee of Agricultural Cooperation of the EU), director of its livestock department and coordinator for questions related to food and animal feed safety. BSE: what’s the current situation in Europe? “The figures are reassuring. An increase in cases from one year to the next has not been registered for a long time now. The measures taken have been shown to be effective; the total ban on animal feeds made from meat residues and bone meal and the destruction of material posing a specific risk have practically halted the disease. It should be said that the cows affected by BSE are over three years old, and in view of the incubation periods, other cases will undoubtedly be ascertained in dairy cows of lesser age today; the controls are now being conducted over the whole span of the 5/6/7 years in the life of a cow. However, the monitoring system put into place now enables us to form a global and realistic idea of the situation both at the European level and that of the individual States”. Have the methods of animal husbandry really been improved, or is recourse still being made to the use of meat residues and bone meal as cattle feeds? “The methods of animal husbandry are various: there are farms where herds are raised by intensive rather than extensive methods, both for beef cattle and for dairy cows. It is undoubtedly the case that the majority of cases of mad cow disease have been registered in dairy cows raised by intensive farming methods, with cows being kept in stalls, also for ease of milking. It’s true that it is just in farms of this type that untreated bone meals have been found, and it’s also true that the most widely accepted and plausible thesis today is that BSE is due to the food contamination of dairy cows originating from the United Kingdom. But the dairy farming systems cannot be criminalized; animal feeds derived from meat residues and bone meal are now banned and this prohibition is being respected, with the result that it is virtually impossible to find feeds derived from meat residues or bone meal not only for the feeding of ruminants, but of all other livestock, including pigs and poultry”. And yet the European Parliament has accused some member States of failing to implement the EU legislation. Why? “The protocols are the same in all countries. The legislative provisions are based on scientific opinions, they too applicable to the Union as a whole. Unfortunately, however, the system presents some weak links. For example, each country has its own Agency for food safety that issues opinions that sometimes differ from those of the Commission. In this way misunderstandings arise between the Authorities and between consumers themselves. The solution, once again, can only be the uniformity also of the scientific opinions. Lastly, it is worth recalling the role played by the European Veterinary Office, with its headquarters in Dublin. Its job is to verify whether the national Agencies are respecting the EU legislation in the course of their programmes of prevention and control. The missions conducted by the office are innumerable and its reports are published and available on the Internet; the data show the inadequacy and shortcomings concerning the stockpiling of materials at risk, for example in Germany and in Spain. The objective is to harmonize the operation of the various national services”.