Brussels, 15/10/2008 (Agence Europe) - On Tuesday 14 October, EU member states gave their backing to a European Commission proposal to relax the bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) monitoring system in the light of the significant progress made recently in combating this animal disease. Currently, the active monitoring programme (which has been in place since July 2001) requires all healthy slaughtered cattle above 30 months old (some 10 million animals annually) and all at risk cattle...