Brussels, 22/10/2002 (Agence Europe) - The European Commission has approved a EUR 132 million financial package to fight transmissible spongiform encephalopathies (TSE) and other animal diseases in the EU in 2003. The EU budget will contribute EUR 94 million towards the funding of BSE and scrapie monitoring (of which EUR 30.5 million is for France, EUR 20.7 million for Germany, 9.5 million for Ireland, 6.9 million for Italy, 6.3 million for the Netherlands and 5.9 million for Spain) and EUR 38 million for the eradication and monitoring of major animal diseases in the Member States. The diseases targeted by the programmes either have implications for both human and animal health or cause serious losses in livestock farming and therefore constitute barriers to intra-EU or international trade.
BSE and scrapie monitoring programmes. All Member States, with the exception of the United Kingdom, have submitted to the Commission their programmes for these different tests - some 9-10 million head of cattle will be tested for BSE in 2003. The Commission explained that all cattle slaughtered for human consumption that are more than 30 months old and all dead-on-farm cattle and emergency slaughtered cattle over 24 months have to be tested for BSE. In Sweden, which has a lower BSE risk, healthy slaughtered animals over 30 months are only subject to random sampling. In the United Kingdom, where all over 30 months old animals are excluded from the food chain, all animals over 42 months born after the reinforced feed ban (1 August 1996) have to be tested for BSE, while animals born before this date shall be tested at random. Furthermore, random post mortem testing for scrapie of sheep and goats over 18 months on healthy animals at slaughter and from fallen stock is required. In total about 550,000 animals will be tested for scrapie in 2003.
Animal disease eradication programmes. The Commission has adopted a total of 50 programmes for 2003 for the eradication of 13 major animal diseases in the Member States. EUR 10.45 million will be spent on the eradication of brucellosis in sheep and goats in Greece, Spain, France, Italy and Portugal. This disease causes Malta fever in humans. EUR 7.8 million will go to combat bovine tuberculosis (Greece, Spain, Ireland, Italy and Portugal) while EUR 1.4 million will be spent on fighting rabies in six Member States (rabies is still found in Germany , Austria and France in particular). EUR 1.8 million will be spent on eradicating the most serious viral diseases of pigs such as classical and African swine fever and swine vesicular disease. The fight against scrapie, the transmissible spongiform encephalopathy (TSE) occurring in sheep and goats, will receive EUR 2.3 million in funding. Financial aid of EUR 1.16 million will be provided to control salmonella in 5 Member States (Denmark, France, Ireland , the Netherlands and Austria).