Brussels, 11/01/2001 (Agence Europe) - The Union's Steering Scientific Committee (SSC) is meeting in Brussels on Thursday and Friday to decide on the aptness of bilateral measures adopted by certain Member States in the framework of the mad cow crisis.
Mainly concerned here are national measures going over and above Community legislation, adopted by France (withdrawal from the food chain of beef on the bone (T-bone steak), the thymus, the spine, the spleen and fats from animal meal considered to be specified risk materials) and the ban on animal fats in force in Germany. The embargo measures taken by Austria, Italy and Spain on French beef - measures that the Steering Scientific Committee had already considered as not being scientifically based and that, because of this, should have been lifted on 1 January as the Commission requested - will also be debated by he SSC, the European Commission having, to date, received no formal notification from the countries concerned along these lines. The Austrian embargo on German beef of over twenty months and on beef by-products are also among the number of measures to be examined.
The SSC's opinion on all these measures will enable the Commission either to ask Member States to comply with Community legislation, or to amend Community legislation to include measures regarded as scientifically founded. It will be issued in the light of actual implementation of the temporary ban on meat meal in the feed of all farm animals in the Union, the results of inspections conducted by the Union's Food and Veterinary Office in Member States and implementation of rapid post-mortem BSE screening tests on cattle of over thirty months that began in Member States on 1 January. Concerning these tests, the European Commission sent a questionnaire to all Member States at the end of last week to asking them the type of screening adopted (compulsory system on all cattle at risk of over thirty months or the screening of all cattle of over thirty months entering the food chain, which will not be compulsory before July), the number of cattle tested, animals put down for not having been tested, etc.. The answers to this questionnaire are expected before 15 January.