Europe Sees No Need For Testing Brains Of Younger Cattle
Less testing of cattle brains for BSE is being recommended today to the Board of the Food
Standards Agency of the European Commission. Under current regulations, the brains of all cattle aged over 30 months are tested for BSE before the beef is allowed into the food chain. The plan is to raise the testing age to 48 months from next January.
In the UK, according to the Times Online, this would mean that beef from 106,000 cattle a year – about a quarter of all British beef produced annually – would be allowed on sale for the dinner plate without their brains being tested.
The Food Standards Agency's board advice will be sent to health ministers. Approval has already been given to the Commission by the European Food Safety Authority (Efsa). The newspaper reports that:
Professor Patrick Wall, chairman of Efsa and an adviser to the FSA on meat controls, told The Times that the tests on 30 month-old cattle were redundant. “In the past two years of testing for BSE in animals over 30 months there have been no positive cases in cattle under 42 months throughout Europe. My view is that the controls are not necessary and are not proportionate to the risk,” he said.
The move isn't going down without controversy. Times Online says: The move - 12 years after the Government admitted a link between eating BSE-infected beef and the variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease – has alarmed families who have lost loved ones from the incurable illness.
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