French Beef Industry Snarls Traffic in ‘Mad Cow’ Protest

Slaughterhouse owners and meat transporters blocked traffic for hours at tollbooths in France on Monday to protest stringent new rules on testing cattle for “mad cow” disease.

The government’s plan to screen 20,000 animals per week hurts an industry already battered by mad cow fears, beef industry unions said. They blocked roads into Paris, Rennes, Lyons and Bordeaux.

“We have colossal losses, and our sales are down,” said Nicholas Douzain, director of the FNICGV union of slaughterhouse employees. “We’re going to have to close down if our demands aren’t taken into account.”

The union wants the government to absorb the costs of testing.

After snagging morning rush-hour traffic, protesters began lifting their blockades in the early afternoon.

Henri Demaegdt, a cattle industry representative from Normandy who joined the protests, said the government has failed to provide the industry with adequate means to test animals.

As fears about mad cow disease, or bovine spongiform encephalopathy, peaked in November, the 15-nation European Union decided that all cows older than 30 months would be tested at slaughterhouses before the meat of those animals could enter the food chain.

Older cows are considered to be at higher risk from the fatal, brain-wasting disease.

Experts believe that infected meat can cause “new variant” Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, a similar illness in humans. About 80 people have died of the disease in Britain since the mid-1990s.

In France, where two people have died of the disease, consumer confidence in beef slumped after potentially infected meat wound up on grocery store shelves in October. Many schools have taken beef off the menu, and several cuts of meat, such as the T-bone, have been banned as a precaution.

Adding to the panic, reported cases of mad cow disease jumped in France in 2000, in part because of the government-broadened screening. About 150 cows were found to have the disease in France in 2000, compared with 31 in 1999.

In neighboring Germany, where seven cases of the animal ailment have been reported, a government-appointed commission began work Monday on a plan to combat mad cow disease. Commission Chairwoman Hedda Von Wedel said she hopes to issue recommendations on consumer protection by summer, a target she admitted is “ambitious.”

The commission is part of Germany’s efforts to calm consumer fears over mad cow disease. Officials have been criticized for maintaining that German beef was safe until shortly before the first case of infection was discovered in November.