Britain Makes Bid to Soothe ‘Mad Cow’ Fears

Rebuffed by allies abroad and disbelieved by consumers at home, the beleaguered British government Wednesday promised to incinerate cattle at a rate of 90 an hour as the keystone of measures to allay fears of “mad cow disease.”

Skeptical farmers are not convinced that destruction of 15,000 older cattle each week to keep them out of the food chain is possible, however--and Europe may demand an even more sweeping cull.

In a crisis that has isolated and humiliated Britain in Europe and brought a proud, multibillion-dollar industry to a standstill, there was no sign of any government plan for implementing a cull that one farmer called “a logistical nightmare.”

Slaughtering the cattle is not the problem, officials of the National Farmers Union said, but in the absence of any sign from the harassed government of Prime Minister John Major, no one is sure how to dispose of the carcasses.

Nine existing incinerators specially built to destroy cattle infected with bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) can consume about 3,000 carcasses each week if they run virtually round-the-clock.

Building facilities will take time, money and the permission--highly doubtful--of local planning boards. Even in a best-case scenario, destruction of more than 4 million animals at the end of their working lives will last into the next century.

“As far as we know, the culled animals will be slaughtered normally at abattoirs [slaughterhouses], but when the cull will start is not clear and neither are the mechanics,” said Trevor Hayes, a spokesman for the National Farmers Union. “The question of who incinerates the animals and how still must also be sorted out.”

The government insists that eating beef is safe, but after a decade of “mad cow” alarms, popular disbelief in the official handling of the crisis is widespread. In a poll sponsored by the newspaper the Guardian, 73% of respondents said they suspect the government knew there was a risk the disease might pass to humans but tried to hide it.

After failing to overturn a worldwide export ban on British beef in two marathon days of emergency meetings of European Union farm ministers, British Agriculture Minister Douglas Hogg returned to opposition derision in Parliament on Wednesday.

“The deal you have brought back from Luxembourg is the worst of all worlds,” Gavin Strang, who speaks on agriculture for the opposition Labor Party, told Hogg. “While the selective slaughter policy may have a part to play, consumers will only be confident that British beef is safe when all the measures necessary to keep the BSE agent out of human food are in place and are being effectively enforced.”

BSE is a brain-destroying disease that has killed about 160,000 British cattle fed food containing parts of sheep, known to have suffered from a similar disease for two centuries. On March 20, British scientists reported a suspected link between BSE and a form of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, a fatal human brain affliction, in 10 patients. However, they made clear there is no scientific evidence to support their suspicions.

Hogg had hoped Britain’s offer to slaughter older animals--the practice of including sheep parts in cattle feed was banned in 1989--would persuade European partners to lift the export ban.

“That ban is not justified. It is not based on scientific analysis. It should be removed,” he said angrily Wednesday in Luxembourg after an EU ministers’ meeting ended at 6 a.m. local time.

EU nations offered to pay 70% of the cull costs, but European ministers may also demand the slaughter of entire herds in which a single animal is affected. That is the practice in Ireland and France, although there is no evidence that BSE passes from one cow to another. Dutch authorities are ordering the slaughter and destruction of 64,000 calves imported from Britain in the past few months.

More than half the dairy herds and about 15% of beef herds in Britain, owned by more than 30,000 farmers, have had at least one case of BSE. The number of cases in Britain peaked in 1992 at about 35,000, a function of the long incubation period.

Under British restrictions imposed since the crisis broke, only animals slaughtered before the age of 30 months, and then with rigorous safeguards, are allowed to enter the food chain. Even so, consumers in Britain--and in much of the rest of Europe--are staying away from beef.

Reporting to Parliament on the Luxembourg talks, Hogg stressed that animals, especially dairy cows, would not be rushed to the slaughterhouse.

“I emphasize this is not a compulsory slaughter scheme. The objective is to take older cattle, cows and bulls coming onto the market for slaughter in the normal way at the end of their working life.”

European ministers have asked Hogg to return with a plan that outlines selective culling of herds.