Brussels, 04/05/2000 (Agence Europe) - To improve efforts to combat bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) or "mad cow disease" and to reduce European citizens' risks of contracting the new variant of Kreutzfeldt-Jakob disease, the Commission made a proposal on Wednesday for regulation of the use of specified risk materials (SRM) in the human and animal food chain in the Union. These materials include tissues of cattle, sheep and goats, such as brain, spinal cord, intestines, spleen, etc. in which the infection seems to concentrate. The draft decision along these lines, adopted by the College on the initiative of the Commissioner responsible for health and consumer protection, David Byrne, is meant to harmonise rules for the elimination of SRM by obliging all Member States to ban the use of certain materials, the list of which is proportional to the geographical impact of BSE. This list is longer for the United Kingdom and Portugal (high risk countries) than for the other Member States. The proposal is based on the latest scientific opinions and takes account of doubts about the existence of countries exempt from BSE since the appearance last March of a first case of mad cow disease in Denmark, a country thought to be free of the epidemic. The proposal contains the following elements.
Considered the best means of protecting inhabitants of the Union from potential contamination from materials that represent 95% of the risk of infection, this proposal had been announced some time ago by Commissioner Byrne as representing the "missing link" in the Community's legislative arsenal in force or in preparation (such as the programme for the monitoring of BSE through post mortem testing of a sampling of high-risk cattle, which will be introduced in 2001 in all the Member States, see EUROPE of 3 May, page 15) to control the BSE epidemic in the Union. It will replace similar proposals presented earlier by the Commission (in 1997 and again last November) but not accepted by Member States. In the absence of harmonised rules, eight Member States (Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Ireland, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal and the United Kingdom) have introduced national rules. If the new proposal is accepted, the entire European Union will have standards capable of offering citizens maximum protection from the risk of exposure to the new variant of Kreutzfeldt-Jakob disease.
This proposal for a decision will be submitted on 10 May to the Standing Veterinary Committee, which will be acting by qualified majority. If the majority is attained, the Commission will then proceed with formal adoption so that the measure can enter into force on 1 July 2000.