A Taste of Wellness for Savoury and Snacks
Givaudan
In the same week that France finally lifted its six-year ban on imports of British beef over fears of contamination from mad cow disease, news from the Czech Republic shows that the root cause of the ban - BSE - is still far from being eradicated.
According to a report from the CTK news agency, a third case of Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy - or BSE - has been uncovered in Deblin, a town in South Moravia, with 13 cattle having to be slaughtered as a result of the discovery.
A spokesman for the State Veterinary Administration (SVS), Josef Duben, told CTK that one cow, which is about to calve, would be slaughtered later, but that if the mother was shown to be BSE-negative, the calf would be allowed to live. Results of the test were expected yesterday.
The agency reported that the sick cow was born on 26 April 1997 and slaughtered on 25 September. Two of her four calves have already been killed even though they were tested BSE-negative.
Duben stressed that the discovery of the third case of BSE should be put into perspective - some 250,000 cattle have been shown to be BSE-free already - and that the Czech Republic still had fewer cases of mad cow disease than France, Portugal or Germany.
The two previous cases of BSE were also found in South Moravia. The first case, in June 2001, was the first recorded case of mad cow disease outside western Europe and led to the slaughter of 134 cows, while the second, in August 2001, affected just four cows.
The farm at the centre of the first case has seen a 10 per cent drop in milk production since June last year, but the farm's owner said that otherwise he had not seen a significant decline in sales of milk or beef as a result of the case.
A growing number of BSE cases are being uncovered in central and eastern Europe, with Slovakia, Romania and Poland also reporting cases of the disease in the last 18 months.